A notorious despoiler of public lands is shot on his private property just outside of Telluride, Colorado. As newspaper publisher Tom Austin's star reporter observes, there could be thousands of suspects. Then the reporter disappears. The question of who owns the West -- and not just the land, but the history and mythology -- runs deep. Or maybe, in the West, "everything is real estate."
The Examiner is the second Tom Austin mystery, set in 2008. The first is The Uranium Drive, set in 2004 in the remote uranium country of Southwestern Colorado.