Hazard
A Mystery
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
When a block of coal the size of a stove shoots out of the wall, miner Amos Blevins barely has time to react before the entire area is flooded with water. He frantically tries to rescue his crewmates, but in an underground space that is pitch black and too cramped to even stand up, he can barely crawl to safety himself. Inspector Will Murphy is sent to investigate, ordered by his superiors to clear things up quickly so the mine can reopen. After all, if the mine closes, then miners lose their jobs, and so do mine inspectors.
It seems to be a straight forward accident, but Will senses something suspicious about this case—or maybe he's just lashing out at his older brother, who has usurped his place as heir to the largest mining company in Eastern Kentucky and owner of the flooded mine—but Will has decided he won't let this one go, whatever it might cost him.
Before he can get far, Will's witnesses start turning up dead. And Amos, who refuses to follow his boss's orders to lie to Will about conditions in the mine, finds the little he has threatened. Together, these two men will learn that in the mines, life, family, money, and power all come from one thing—coal.
Drawing on his four years of reporting on the coal mines of Kentucky, Harris has painted a vivid portrait of rural Appalachia, beautifully capturing the place and culture of the mining community while weaving a complex and taut story of murder and corruption.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
At the start of journalist Harris s top-notch fiction debut, coal miner Amos Blevins scrambles to rescue co-workers from a sudden, unexpected flood deep in the Blue Gem mine in Hazard, Ky. Despite Blevins s efforts, nine men perish before help can arrive from above. Will Murphy, a federal Mine Safety and Health Administration inspector, looks into what everyone assumes is a tragic, if not unusual, accident. No one expects any complications, particularly since the man who runs the mine is Will s older brother, Paul. But with bad blood between the brothers, Will decides for a variety of reasons to do a real investigation, which turns up anomalies pointing to malfeasance that goes far beyond simple negligence. The reader comes to care about a wide cast of characters, mostly hardscrabble Appalachian men and women, as Harris carefully unspools the many plot threads. Pitch-perfect dialogue and an authentic view of the nuts and bolts of mining help make this an engrossing mystery thriller.