Early's Fall
by Jerry Peterson
In the summer and fall of 1949, Kansas Sheriff James Early investigates the heinous murder of a schoolteacher and pursues a bank robber as intent on remaining free as Early is on capturing him. This historical mystery takes on the aspects of an international thriller when an Israeli soldier/diplomat appears, intent on killing the person who killed the teacher, a woman he had worked with three years earlier in the war to establish modern-day Israel. Early's Fall is more than a first-rate police procedural that will keep you turning pages. It's also the story of a lawman whose life outside the job is coming apart as his wife, pregnant with their first child, sinks into a mental illness only vaguely understood by doctors of the time.