This Bloody Deed: The Magruder Incident

Rating:
Summary: A Novelistic History Of Idaho's First Murder Trial
Review: "This Bloody Deed" is a well researched look at Idaho's first murder trial. Hamilton relates the known facts with a novelist's license for imagined dialouge and motivation. While historians may shudder, this makes the book highly readable.

Three thugs from Sheriff Henry Plummer's gang befriend and then murder packer Lloyd Magruder and party as they are crossing the Bitterroot Mountains from Bannack( now western Montana,then Idaho Territory) to Lewiston Idaho. Magruder's true friend Hill Beachy tracks the killers to San Francisco and returns them to Lewiston to face Idaho's first murder trial, if he can keep them from being lynched.

I grew up with this story as a folktale and as good as the narrative is the best parts of the book are Hamilton's asides into everyday life on the Idaho frontier, boom-bust economics of mining and territorial politics.

My only historical quibble is that my family always accepted that the prosecution's chief witness was also a Plummer gang intimate.

A solid picture of the frontier as it probably was.

Rating:
Summary: A Must Read!
Review: Ladd Hamilton puts to paper one of the most compelling stories of the old west. His writing keeps you glued to the pages by vividly describing how life was 130 years ago. This murder mystery that takes you from the Bitterroot Mountains of the Idaho territory to the city of San Francisco and back is a must read for all.