Search - Eureka

It begins in 1945 and then flashes back to 1900. Eli Gorman and Shamus O' Dell own a good bit of land south of San Francisco. Unable to get along, they play a (totally unbelievable) poker game to see who gets control. Ben Gorman and Brodie Culhane, close friends, watch hidden in the loft. O' Dell loses but he has had his revenge already selling a local town, the Eureka of the title, to the evil Arnie Riker.

Culhane, an orphan, leaves town for highly predictable reasons, becomes a hero in WWI, returns and becomes the deputy lawman until a shootout claims the life of the highly unbelievable Buck Tallman, an old-style Western town marshall.

Tallman dies in a shootout at the local high-end brothel.

Jump ahead a couple of decades and a woman is found dead in her bathtub. It seems accidental: a radio had fallen into the tub, electrocuting her. But the erstwhile detective Zeke Bannon is on the job. My, my: doesn't take long before the apparent accident is found to be a murder!

And off we go back to Eurkea where secrets want to be kept. With Zeke Bannon on the job? Perish the thought --- though you may perish by the time you reach the end of this formulaic potboiler.

Interesting enough book