Eureka [first edition]

Eureka. It's what you say when you strike gold, It's also a town in California where the truth might be buried forever.The year is 194 1. Verna Wilensky has been electrocuted in her bathtub, leaving a lower-middle-class life, no survivors, and a bank account packed with almost a hundred thousand dollars. Mysterious checks have consistently come to her for more than twenty years, most drawn from a bank in San Pietro, a town once known as Eureka.Eureka was a town that used to be a bootlegger's paradise and a gangster's dream. Now it is the rebuilt metropolis where Sheriff Thomas Culhane is launching a bid to be the golden state's next governor. But something just might threaten his ambitions. As police detective Zeke Bannon digs deeper into Wilensky's demise, he unearths a decades-old secret that starts in a shootout, builds to a bloodbath, and could end up within the upper echelons of California's elite, forever changing the destiny of a state.Rich in historical detail, complex in its connection between past and present, and filled with the nonstop action that are the hallmarks of this modern master, Eureka is an epic achievement of storytelling and suspense -- William Diehl's most extraordinary novel yet.