The Freshour Cylinders

by Speer Morgan

Book Overview

Assistant prosecutor Tom Freshour investigates the brutal murder of an eccentric and enigmatic collector of Indian artifacts. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1878448846
• ISBN13: 9781878448842
• Release Date: October 1998
• Publisher: MacAdam/Cage Publishing
• Length: 345 Pages
• Weight: 1.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.2" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

One Really! Good Book.

This book is entertaining, well-written, informative, well-plotted, sexy, and with an intrigueing cast of characters. As an anthropologist who once lived in Oklahoma, I appreciate how well it captures both the ethos of the area, and the issues of contemporary cultural interactions and archaeology that it deals with. In addition to all this, one of the best things about The Freshour Cylinders is the author's gentle and perceptive portrayals of human, especially male/female, interaction. It is rare to find a book that is so enjoyable on so many levels. It's fun to share a good thing: I want this book to be read.

The FRESHOUR CYLINDERS is a keeper.

Speer Morgan has created a well-balanced novel; the plot is intense, the characters are well-fleshed out and the writing is superb. This is a book that one will give a repeat-read. It has all the essentials of entertainment as well as a beautiful display of history. Morgan's sense of place is extraordinary.

Oklahoma native says book captures the flavor of the region

The Freshour Cylinders by Speer Morgan is an exciting and authentic picture of western Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma in the thirties. It combines authentic information about the famous Spiro Indian Mounds with a suspenseful story about murder, love, and the Native American experience in "Indian Territory." It is as gripping a thriller as you'll find on the shelves, and it has the added attraction of believable characters and an unusually keen sense of place and time.

A vivid and beautifully written novel

What a fine book The Freshour Cylinders is! It was the kind of reading experience that peopled my daydreams and nightdreams with vivid characters in exquisite detail. I felt like a time-traveller, transported to an exotic location, immersed in a time and place that, before this book, had little clarity to me. I have nothing but praise for this book -- it was thoroughly enjoyable and having to put it down put me in a bad mood. It's a book to savor for its splendid characters, dead-on dialogue, cinemascope descriptions of place and atmosphere, and driving plot. It's the kind of unbelieveable story that becomes completely believeable in the expert telling. I couldn't predict where I was being taken, like being driven through the Winding Stair Mountains in heavy fog, and I was thankful that a writer with unerring skill was at the wheel. Speer Morgan has an unfailing and incredible sense of historical accuracy. I was completely convinced that these characters were real. In addition to the pleasures of pure storytelling and exotic place, Freshour provided an even deeper satisfaction. It's such a powerful and harrowing book about the past: about the way our cultural past affects us collectively and the way we are each affected by our individual past. Tom Freshour, being half white, half Indian, is such a good character for this unfolding. And what a stunning indictment of white greed and American justice!

I stayed up all night reading this book

Speer Morgan's latest novel, The Freshour Cylinders, is an engaging combination of edge-of-your-seat mystery and historical drama. The novel is set in 1930s Arkansas and Oklahoma and traces the tribulations of Tom Freshour (who some may remember as the strong and silent orphan from The Whipping Boy) as he tries to discover why people who are involved with a local Indian burial mound are turning up dead. Morgan's characters, from the dashing Tom to the sexy Rainy to the contrary office typewriter which has a habit of jumping off the desk, are so lovingly detailed that they are often simultaneously hilarious and heartbreaking. It is this wealth of engaging characters as much as the twists and turns of the plot that will keep you reading.Tom Freshour is still as strong and stoic as he was in The Whipping Boy but has gained that wry recklessness that turns action heros into legends. His steamy romance with Rainy and his forays into the mystery that involves both of them resurrect old ghosts so that Tom is not only forced to play detective but must also confront questions about his own heritage. As the mystery barrels along, Morgan manages to infuse the novel with a good dose of fascinating history and intriguing psychological conflict. This is a beautifully written story of a man struggling with issues that have violently leapt from the personal to the political while navigating the astonishing events that are piling up around him. You won't be able to put this book down.