The End of the Line

It's the winter of 1883, and five hundred rail workers have halted their push through the Rockies at Holt City, an isolated shantytown in the shadow of the Continental Divide. The men are tired and cold, and patience is as scarce as the rationed food. Then, Deek Penner, a CPR section boss, is brutally murdered at the end of the track. Durrant Wallace, a veteran of the celebrated March West by the North West Mounted Police a decade earlier, is returned to active duty to investigate the murder. Durrant lost his leg in a gun battle with whiskey traders three years earlier, and he struggles with being a Mountie who cannot ride. When Durrant arrives, Holt City is packed with possible suspects: illegal whiskey smugglers, spies for rival railways, explosive dealers, and a mysterious Member of Parliament who insists on getting his bureaucratic fingers into everything. Durrant is most concerned with the amount of illegal explosive trading-explosives that are meant for railroad blasting, but are instead being sold to those outside the trade. With little in the way of forensic science to draw upon, Durrant must use his cunning and determination to soothe the charged situation before it turns explosive, literally.