The Freshour Cylinders

I was scanning through one of my dad's bookshelves when I came across Speer Morgan's The Freshour Cylinders. It's a murder mystery, but I selected it because it was set in Depression-era western Arkansas, which made it a somewhat unusual period piece for me.

The story has some basis in historical fact, as it deals with the Spiro Mounds in southeastern Oklahoma, as well as the idea that some of the Native Americans in the area at that time, if they'd been fortunate with their mineral rights holdings, were trying to use that money to help their less fortunate brethren in the area. The book is framed as a historian transcribing dictaphone recordings (stored in cylinders) by an attorney from Fort Smith, Arkansas, by the name of Tom Freshour. So the chapters are titled according to what cylinder they were from.

The mystery isn't too hard to unravel, seeing as I was able to figure out parts of it. What I couldn't piece together was either a result of my not understanding financial tricks well enough, or trying to link too many things to the same person. There's more going than simply one rich guy trying to have everything his way.

The book reads easily, but it is a little strange that Freshour keeps the events so neatly chronological, considering he's recording this 20+ years after the fact. What I mean is, if he didn't have certain information at one point in the story, but did later on, he doesn't appear to let that later knowledge cloud how he relates the earlier parts. Though maybe he does, in the sense that he knows what's irrelevant (even for character development or world-building purposes) and left that out. The time period was used well, so that the troubles people were having with drought and unemployment were there, but in service to the story, rather than overwhelming it.