Thea Barlow, the intrepid editor for Chicago’s Western True Adventures Magazine, has returned to Wyoming once again. This time it’s to have some vacation time with her old flame, Max Holman, and just incidentally, to interview Kid Corcoran, Last of the Old Time Bandits, recently released from prison.Upon arriving at the Racy Ladies Bed & Breakfast, Thea learns that it is owned by Kid Corcoran’s granddaughter, who resents having him living with her and is embarrassed by his past. The local gift shop owner tells Thea that the Kid’s colorful past not only includes stealing from the Wyoming jade mines and robbing banks, but that she also believes that the Kid was the murderer of his best friend’s father. When Thea attends a Fourth of July rodeo, she meets Jimmy Chin–who believes that the Kid stole some of the Chin family’s precious jade figurines, and buried them somewhere on the old Corcoran ranch.
Thea strikes up a friendship with another young woman reporter, Phoebe Zimmerman, who is also staying at Racy Ladies, and investigating the Kid’s past. The situation turns deadly when Phoebe is found dead in Thea’s room. The townspeople think that the reporter discovered something in the Kid’s past that got her killed and start a vendetta against him. Thea takes pity on the old guy and agrees to drive him to the ranch where the Kid once lived. He then tries to kill her!
Set against the wild panoply of Wyoming, and culminating in a knife fight amidst a raging plains fire, Carol Caverly has again penned a twisty mystery, as well as brought to life the Old West as it once was.