Dust jacket by Gavin L. O'Keefe

There are subplots aplenty in this second installment of the saga of Bleeker’s Island where several men find themselves stranded by a flooding river. The jewels known as Cleopatra’s Tears are missing and one of the men is believed to be Actor Hart, notorious killer and thief—maybe even the one who stole the jewels. Can the hick sheriff figure out which one is Hart, and make sure he’s the one who’s left without a life jacket when the dam upriver gives way? Time is running out fast and only Harry Stephen Keeler knows how his three-volume mega-novel is going to resolve itself.