Past Dying — Malcolm Shuman

An American Legend was Born on the Louisiana Bayou. An American Dream was Murdered There Two Centuries Later.

Alan Graham is a contract archaeologist, and certainly not an expert on paranormal activity. Yet he's the one the Louisiana Corps of Engineers sends to investigate a small-town librarian's claim that she saw a UFO fall into the river. But instead of some extraterrestrial traveler, Graham discovers a dead man in a car clutching an ancient silver coin and slain with a most unusual blade sunken into the muddy river bottom.

History is Alan Graham's greatest passion. So distancing himself from this case, with its intriguing connections to the past, is out of the question especially when the trail turns toward the legend of Jim Bowie, the knife-wielding local hero who died at the Alamo. But his own enthusiastic curiosity might be pulling Graham in over his head. Because entwined somewhere in tangled backwoods myths and crimes are the keys to a contemporary murderer's dark motive and bloody next move.