Cannibal Plateau,New

Review ''People who love good writing are going to love Cannibal Plateau. Joe Wise is an artist with words every sentence clear and true. A winner.'' Tony Hillerman''Wise does a splendid job of describing the beautiful scenery of the region, and the protagonists' investigation into the murders is, at times, riveting.'' Albuquerque Journal''On a spring day in 1874, a reporter for Harper's Weekly traveling with a surveying party on a wilderness road through a remote mountain valley in Colorado's San Juan mountains, wandered onto an abandoned campsite where he found the mutilated and rotting bodies of five men. Immediately a search began for Alfred Hammit, a hapless drifter and the sole survivor of the illfated prospecting expedition, suspected of murdering the five men and living off their bodies during the severe winter that had trapped them. Fascinated by the compelling details of this 120yearold case, David Walton and his friend Jack Fuller team up to reinvestigate the mysterious events surrounding the prospectors' deaths and the two trials that led to Hammit's conviction. Before the end of what at first seems like an academic exercise, Walton and Fuller find themselves digging up graves, trailing a suspected drug dealer through the mountains and dealing with the murder of a local mine operator. Cannibal Plateau is one of those gripping novels so easy to pick up and so difficult to put down.'' Reviewer's Bookwatch Product Description On a spring day in 1874, a reporter for Harper's Weekly traveling with a surveying party on a wilderness road through a remote mountain valley in Colorado's San Juan mountains, wandered onto an abandoned campsite where he found the mutilated and rotting bodies of five men. Immediately a search began for Alfred Hammit (Packer), a hapless drifter and the sole survivor of the illfated prospecting expedition, suspected of murdering the five men and living off their bodies during the severe winter weather that had trapped them. Fascinated by the compelling details of this 120yearold case, David Walton and his friend Jack Fuller team up to reinvestigate the mysterious events surrounding the prospectors' deaths and the two trials that led to Hammit's conviction. Before the end of what at first seems like an academic exercise, Walton and Fuller find themselves digging up graves, trailing a suspected drug dealer through the mountains and dealing with the murder of a local mine operator. About the Author JOE WISE, a physician and freelance writer, was born in Texas and has traveled extensively throughout the Rocky Mountain Southwest. His work has appeared in numerous regional and national periodicals including the Travel Section of The New York Times, Sunset, American History, Old West and New Mexico magazines, The Journal of the West and The Journal of Military History of Texas and the Southwest.Cannibal Plateau was judged Best Historical Novel at Southwest Writers Workshop. His second novel, In The Moro, received an Award for Fiction from the Colorado Independent Publishers Association. His third novel, The Fish, was published in 2002. Wise is a member of Western Writers of America, PEN USA and Southwest Writers Workshop. He lives with his wife in Santa Fe.