Donald Holmes

The Lure of El Rio D'ais Donald Holmes

It's 1893. Buoyed by his capture of a slippery nemesis in Florida, Scotland Yard inspector Maurice Ogelvie plans to return to London. As unexpected events draw him ever further west, the young man discovers a brash new country, and a rebellious inner self that he has long suppressed. Torn between the call of duty and the wonders that repeatedly beckon him, he is changed forever. In "Return to the River", he tells of the new Madison Square Garden, Central Park and the Brooklyn Bridge-and police corruption in New York City. Chicago shows him the "White City", the Great Columbian Exposition, but he endures the fetid stink of the stockyards and pursues a vicious serial rapist-murderer. Under spacious western skies, he revels in the beauty of the land and raw honesty of the frontier-but finds that old European feuds have preceded him. In Butte, Montana, the "Richest Hill on Earth", he finally finds the love of his life, and reason to come back to "El Rio d'Ais". Dr. John Watson, listening to him, succumbs to the lure of this river. "From the Doctor's Diary" relates three mysterious cases in Florida in the years leading to World War I.