The Miwok Eagles: a San Francisco Mystery

Publisher Marketing: The Miwok Eagles are a set of 1849 ten-dollar gold coins that become part of a bold con game mounted by an international counterfeiter named Fritz Boehmer. Miwok Indians in the San Francisco Bay Area accepted coins like these as payment for some of their land in the 19th Century. Boehmer plans to steal the coins from a San Francisco coin evaluator named Mirza Tarkanian, publicize their disappearance to drive up their value, and offer copies of them for sale. David Moore, co-owner of the Rothmore Security Agency, is trying to hold his swing shift of some fifty widely spread guard posts together when the theft of the Eagles takes place. The theft and resultant death of the coin dealer's nephew are partly his fault because he is late posting a guard to coin dealer Mirza Tarkanian, who frequently uses Moore's security agency when he is moving valuable coins from one place to another. The Miwok Eagles belong to Bess Carman, wealthy and influential owner of a ranch near San Francisco. Tracing the crime to her ranch, Moore begins to unravel the method of the criminals and reveal two murders tied to the crime. He has the help of a female archeologist who is studying Miwok village sites on the ranch. Her name is Kelly Raphael, and she too is disturbed by the activities of Bess Carman's visitors, especially when a servant goes missing. The search for evidence of murder takes Moore on a night hike to a site on the ranch where he finds buried in a dry stream bed, a crucible, a clean and carefully wrapped rifle, and the odor of a body which he has no time to exhume. Moore's efforts to uncover the plot lead him into deadly encounters when he becomes the target of one of the counterfeiters. Contributor Bio:  Smith, Barry Barry H. Smith, MD, PhD, received his undergraduate education (BA) at Harvard College, Cambridge, Massachusetts, with the Class of 1965; his PhD in Biology/Neurobiology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1968; and his MD from Cornell University Medical College in 1972. He completed a surgical internship and a year of general surgery residency at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center in New York City before entering neurosurgical residency at New York Hospital and then Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. Dr. Smith was Program Director of the Neurosciences Research Program at MIT from 1976-1978 and then spent five years (1978-1983) at the National Institute of Neurological and Communicative Disorders and Stroke (NINCDS) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, where he became Deputy Chief of Surgical Neurology. He is the author of more than 100 scientific and clinical papers and serves on the boards of the Desmond Tutu Peace Foundation, the Kornfeld Foundation, and the New York City Rescue Mission. He is also a member of the Advisory Council of the Atlantic Legal Foundation.