Calico
$2.99
Price checked Oct 28. Prices change often, so confirm on Amazon before you buy.
A Barstow detective chases bodies that are somehow a century old, and finds a Mojave rift linking today's highway to an 1880s silver town.
Our take
A desert cop case with a hole in time
A dead man in 1880s miner's clothes walks into traffic near Barstow, and his bones are a century old. Lee Goldberg runs a modern police procedural, led by a disgraced ex-LAPD detective, alongside a vivid 1880s silver-mining town, and the two timelines pay each other off cleverly. Reviewers keep praising the genre blend, the well-researched Old West half and Goldberg's dry humor; it was a Spur Award finalist. We picked it as the rare crime novel that sci-fi and Western readers can share. It takes a little while to warm up, and you have to accept the time-travel premise without much explanation.
4.6 out of 5 from 7,647 Amazon ratings
