When a teacher disappears from a local missionary school in the rural Illinois town of West Wheeling, acting sheriff Homer Deters investigates. Before long, he's got three more missing persons on his hands: local ne'er-do-well Ash Jackson, a pregnant teenager, and an ATF agent ostensibly on Jackson's trail. Further investigation turns up the bones of a murder victim in Goode Swamp and a second corpse dumped by the highway, with its jaw blown off to prevent identification. Homer must determine just whose remains these are, and who - if any - among the missing might be their killer. The investigation is complicated by a car theft, a twenty-three vehicle pileup in the center of town, a missing circus tiger, and the arrival of more ATF agents in search of their vanished colleague. With no help from the feds and only a couple of part-time deputies, Homer turns to his moonshiner buddy, Rye Willis, and the town's eccentric postmistress, Nina Ross. With their timely aid and his own nose for the truth, Homer manages to locate the missing, identify the bodies, and bring a murderous impostor to justice.< P>Michael Allen Dymmoch has served as President and Secretary of the Midwest Chapter of Mystery Writers of America, and newsletter editor for the Chicagoland chapter of Sisters in Crime. He resides in Illinois.