The Waterbed Murder — Warwick Downing

Though written for readers of the mid-1970's, this award-winning mystery and Book Club selection remains a compelling read. In 1975, Denver, Colorado, was emerging from cow town into big city, and the environmental movement was emerging as a political force. That time is captured in this novel, viscerally and tangibly, by Nathan Tree and Phillip Garver.

Tree, a former District Attorney who had been a rising conservative political star, inexplicably drops out of politics, and becomes a drunk. He had relished in the prosecution and execution of a man whom he later found was innocent, and his conscience won't leave him alone. Garver, the crusading leader of Clear Sky-an environmental group-is a rising liberal political star with secrets of his own.

When Clear Sky celebrates a legal victory over Great Mesa Shale in Phillip's apartment, the woman he'd been living with: secretly an oil company geologist: is found. Inside his waterbed. Against his instincts and judgment, Nathan takes on his defense.

(Selected by legendary suspense-fiction critic Charles Willeford of the Miami Herald as one of the year's ten best mysteries.)