Dead Lager

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PLOT

When podcast host Becca Harlow breaks through a crumbling plaster wall in the basement of Halcyon, Illinois's derelict Fenwick Bottling Works, she expects to find dusty equipment and a good episode. What she finds instead is a perfectly preserved 1930s bottling line, six intact cases of Fenwick's Reserve Amber Ale, and a skeleton still cradling a bottle like a sleeping man at closing time.

Becca's podcast, Forgotten Taps, has built a loyal audience of beer historians, retired brewers, and Midwestern nostalgia enthusiasts. But nothing in three seasons of amateur sleuthing through brewery archives has prepared her for an actual crime. The skeleton is soon identified as Clem Wachowski, a bottling line foreman who vanished in October 1938 and was presumed to have skipped town. The local historical society has always blamed Prohibition-era debts. The current owner of the building, eager to sell to a Chicago developer, would prefer everyone move along quickly.

Becca has two things working in her favor: an audio archive stretching back to her very first interview with the last living Fenwick employee, and a network of brewing contacts who understand exactly what the chemistry of that sealed ale bottle might reveal. She has two things working against her: the killer's descendants still live in Halcyon, and someone very much wants that wall bricked back up.

Perfect for fans of Diane Mott Davidson and Julia Buckley, Dead Lager is a slow-pour mystery full of small-town secrets, the warm funk of old grain, and one woman's refusal to let the past stay sealed.