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Thursday, August 20, 2015

The Shut Mouth Society, a Novel by James D. Best

The Shut Mouth Society is a mystery story in which Greg Evarts, a Santa Barbara police detective gets involved in looking for certain documents revolving around Abe Lincoln's pre-inaugural speech which is laid out in the Prologue. Evarts has a friend, Abraham Douglass, a descendant of Frederick Doublass, who asks Evarts to have a historical document looked at to determine its authenticity and along with the document is a page of numerical codes that needs to be decoded. Evarts contacts one Patricia Baldwin, History Professor and Lincoln expert, and almost falls too much for her, or did he?.

The next thing you know is that Douglass has been murdered by a person or persons unknown trying to get their hands on the document for some reason. A false charge that Evarts is the Rock Burglar  has the local police looking to arrest him, so he and Baldwin leave town to avoid arrest and the people looking for the document. They drive across country to Boston, hoping they have lost the man/men looking for the document. We learn that both Evarts' and Baldwin's ancestors were involved somehow in this unknown Shut Mouth Society and it has filtered down to them with the document somehow concealing the connection. This mystery takes them from Boston to New York to Washington, D.C., and to North Carolina before they get to the bottom of it.

There is plenty of action and suspense that follows the two along on there course of discovery. So much so, that Evarts must contact some of his old Army buddies to help protect them and the papers that people want really bad, bad enough to kill anyone who gets in their way.

This book kept me hooked and I hated to turn away from it unfinished, which I had to do only two times. It was 322 pages long and it's been a while since I read one that long and was so engrossed in it. Mister Best is a fine writer and I am looking forward to dipping into his westerns and see how they read.  Mystery, action, suspense, and more all there in an exciting tale of intrigue. 

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