Coeur d'Alene Waters

COEUR D’ALENE, IDAHO, is where people go to hide. Neo-Nazis. Corrupt politicians. Mining men with buried secrets.

In 1972, ninety-one men were killed in a mining “accident” sparked by a fire lit nearly a mile underground: the mystery was never solved. After the rest escaped, only three miners survived underground.

More than twenty years later, Matt Worthson is a sheriff’s lieutenant and the disgraced son of mining hero and Sunshine Mine survivor Stanley Worthson. Matt expects to finish out his years on the force in quiet ignominy. But when the gruesomely dismembered body of a police chaplain is found at the swanky Coeur d’Alene Resort, Matt is tapped to find the murderer.

As Matt investigates the murder of his friend, he finds himself digging deep into the labyrinth of lies that seeps beneath the Coeur d’Alene region, including the Sunshine Mine disaster.

Matt now has a chance to uncover both the mystery of the case before him, and the darker truths in his father’s past. A neo-Nazi kid holds the only key. If Matt can find a way through the kid’s bravado, he might just uncover the truth behind his own broken family.

Written by Pacific Northwest journalist Ned Hayes, based on his knowledge and experience of the Coeur d’Alene and Spokane regions.

Complex, richly atmospheric, and utterly convincing in its portrayal of the Pacific Northwest, Coeur d’Alene Waters will enthrall fans of Mystic River and Snow Falling on Cedars.