Highway Robbery

New York: St. Martin's Minotaur, 2000. First Edition [Stated], First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. [10], 290, [4] pages. Inscribed by the author on the title page. Inscription reads To Terry Gamer, Assistant Chief Best wishes, John Billheimer. This is an An Owen Allison Mystery. John Billheimer, a native West Virginian. He holds an engineering Ph.D. from Stanford University and for thirty years was Vice President of a small consulting firm specializing in transportation research. Over the years, he investigated such diverse topics as commuter lane performance, mobile phone safety, drunk driving countermeasures, DMV service, video surveillance, and motorcycle safety. An early research project took him back to the coalfields of his native state, where he observed the poverty, independence, and resourcefulness that mark the characters of his first novel, The Contrary Blues which was the first book in the "funny, sometimes touching," mystery series set in Appalachia and featuring failure analyst Owen Allison. The second book in the series, HIGHWAY ROBBERY, explores West Virginia roadbuilding scandals. A second mystery series featuring Lloyd Keaton, a Midwest sports writer with a gambling problem, debuted in 2012 with FIELD OF SCHEMES, a mystery involving baseball and steroids. In the second book in the series, A PAYER TO BE MAIMED LATER, Keaton begins writing the biography of a pitching legend when he finds the player's hidden past belies his wholesome reputation and may include manslaughter. The author's output includes two nonfiction books, BASEBALL AND THE BLAME GAME, which examines scapegoating in the major leagues, and HITCHCOCK AND THE CENSORS. Highway robbery is a term that refers to a robbery that takes place on a highway, specifically a highway that is open to the public. The term highway robbery is often used interchangeably with highway robbery spree, which refers to a series of robberies that are committed on a highway. Civil engineer Owen Allison is called home to West Virginia by his mother, who's convinced that a skeleton unearthed by a construction crew belongs to Owen's late father-a highway commissioner believed drowned decades ago when a dam burst. Owen's brother, George, the current commissioner, is battling alcohol, a failed marriage, local skulduggery and tomato-hurling environmentalists, one of whom is murdered alongside George's incriminating fingerprints. It seems a great many people in town are harboring skeletons in their closets, especially Owen's own family. He digs deep into the infrastructure of the past for answers to the mounting tragedies of the present-built on the cracked foundation of deception, lies, secrets and murder. Derived from a Kirkus review: Seems like nobody's interested in building roads anymore. Not West Virginia Director of Transportation Alicia Fox, who, without an engineering degree, stalls every road project on her drawing board, installing self-destructing (but environmentally friendly) traffic cones, and verbally abusing Highway Commissioner George Allison, son of the corruption-busting late Commissioner Wayne Allison. Certainly not Mary Jewel Robertson, who leads her brigade of tomato-hurling environmentalists on a charge that stops Eddie Hager's road crew dead in its tracks in the middle of their repaving job on Gobbler's Grade. But not quite as dead as Ray Cantrip, whose body Hager's bulldozer unearths right under the asphalt. The discovery brings home George's brother Owen, hero of the Contrary transit scandal, to investigate the death of his father's best friend—who's also Owen's best friend's father. As straight-arrow Owen grapples with the past, alcoholic George is plagued by the present: the loss of his job, the collapse of his marriage, and finally an indictment for murder after Mary Jewel is found dead in her apartment with his fingerprints on her front door. Accompanied by his ubiquitous ex-wife Judith, Owen digs up and repairs misdeeds past and present to prove the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. The intricately layered plot and gentle good humor make this a worthy successor to his first.