The Bottle with the Green Wax Seal. Harry Stephen Keeler

The poor souls who spent the first two books of the Big River Trilogy stranded on a small island waiting for the dam upriver to break are still there, but this time there are more than four. And you can bet that each man has a convincing story why he’s not Actor Hart, the ruthless killer. <P> There are not enough life jackets to go around and the Sheriff must figure out which is the criminal so that Hart is the one left to die when the waters begin to rise. <P> Vintage Keeler, chock full of outrageous dialect and plot reversals. (Written in 1939. Published in U.S. by Dutton in 1942.) Third and final in the series that began with The Portrait of Jirjohn Cobb and Cleopatra’s Tears.