Murder On The Line

The year is 1920. Somewhere along the rain-lashed Mississippi, a lonely clapboard train station hunches against the storm. Water sheets off the corrugated roof in silver curtains, turning the platform into a black mirror of puddles and mud. A handful of strangers have gathered under the leaking eaves and in the dim, smoke-hazed waiting room—salesmen with stained collars, a preacher clutching a worn Bible, a young woman in a damp cloche hat, a rough farmhand, a soft-spoken clerk, and one or two others whose faces remain half-hidden by shadow and rain. The next train is still an hour away. One of them is not what they seem. One of them has already decided someone will not reach the next stop alive. The air smells of wet wool, coal smoke, and something colder underneath. The investigation begins now.