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An engineer battles a small town to see his sister released from prison

It takes Reno three days to get from Peru to the Gulf Coast, and when he gets to Waynesport he has only one stop to make: the city jail, where his sister is being held on a murder rap. The way Vickie tells it, she saw her husband having a drink with another woman, they quarreled, and she went to the bathroom. When she came out, he was shot through the back of the skull. The police believe every word of her story—except the part about who pulled the trigger.

Her husband was in Waynesport looking for a crook named Rupert Conway, whom the local police do not seem to want found. To save his sister's neck, Reno must wade through corruption as fetid as the swamps that surround this hellish southern town, where the alligators aren't the only ones who are eager to kill.