Manual of Ready Reference to the Authors’ Digest: Containing Brief Analyses of the World’s Great Stories (1909)

Henry Moss is home on his horse ranch when word reaches him his good friend and neighbor Agnes took ill and died suddenly. The sixteen-year-old immigrant girlas body arrives in her hometown of Parkston, South Dakota, in a sealed casket the afternoon of June 2, 1906. Because of the suspected contagious disease, the body is hastily buried. However, after the funeral, it is discovered that she may not have died naturally, and the body is disinterred for the first of two autopsies revealing murder. Three local men travel to Sioux Falls, where the girl died, while in the employ of the rich and powerful Jewish brewer Walter Wiseman to investigate. Henry Moss, burdened by grief that he could have prevented the death, covertly conducts his own mission. They soon realize that justice is like a greased pigait is hard to catch and even harder to hold on to!