Dry Rot

<p>Cold rain falls endlessly matching the striking carpenters’ gloomy spirits as they walk the line. Their woe becomes terror when thugs thunder out the mill gate atop horses to club and ride down the men as they flee up the muddy road. From this murderous beginning the tale spins out its action driven forward by the deaths of a carpenter and construction boss the union president’s arrest and the sly machinations of an agent provocateur. Rain falls streams rage and ravine bridges begin to collapse as Sage and his team fight to win the strike and exonerate the union’s president. Set in the unusually wet fall of 1902 this fictional story reveals how “honest” and dishonest municipal graft shaped the city of Portland Oregon. In the telling it exposes more than one precarious and slippery slope even as it adds yet another memorable character to the mix one based on the real life man many once called Portland’s “ragpicker poet.” This is the third offering in the award-winning Sage Adair mystery series.</p>