The Throat (Dust to Ink)

The mill called it an accident because accident costs less than murder.A man went into the machinery. The company paid for the box. The wages came home light the following Friday.Then Hale stepped off the train.He is not a lawman. He is not a reformer. He is a thief with clean boots, sharp arithmetic, and a watch set five minutes fast. He came east from Wyoming with no intention of saving anyone, but a false number has a way of bothering a man who knows how theft is supposed to work.In a 1890s New England mill town, the respectable men keep the cleanest books. The mill calls wage theft improvement. The bank calls silence order. A fund named Benevolence has never built what it promised. And every lie has been written carefully enough to pass for civic duty.Hale starts with a light pay envelope.He finds a body.Then he finds the men who learned that murder is easier to hide when the paperwork is proper.Dust to Ink: The Throat is the first book in a dark historical crime series where Western grit meets New England manners, politeness is currency, violence is practical, and the truth is only as safe as the paper it is written on.Includes a bonus first chapter of Book II. Read more