THE SIXTEENTH MAN consists of two parallel, intertwined, fast-moving stories that play out in alternating chapters, converging in the final suspenseful pages.

Archaeologist Matt Packard's story is set in the present.

Reno Private Investigator Charlie Callan's takes place in 1963.

Dr. Matthew Packard’s relationships and his career are at crisis points when he’s almost killed in a motorcycle accident in Muleshoe Canyon, near Moab, Utah. The mishap results in his discovery of an ancient burial shaft containing sixteen male skeletons. Fifteen of them date back 100,000 years, dramatically older than any human remains ever found in the Americas. But to Packard’s surprise, he finds himself more fascinated by the sixteenth. It has silver fillings in its teeth, a bullet in its wing-bone, no I.D. The find triggers alarms from Washington, D.C. to Virginia to New Orleans and beyond, and quickly leads to the brutal murder of Packard’s assistant.

Infuriated, determined to find the killer, obsessed by the mystery of the Sixteenth Man, Packard is plunged into danger – and an intrigue that was set in motion by the long-dead Callan – which involves the murder of the 20th century.

In late 1963, Reno PI Charlie Callan accepts a garden-variety domestic surveillance case that promises to extricate him from the shambles of his personal and financial problems. The job takes him to Texas, where it abruptly becomes anything but routine. Charlie finds himself nearly broke, running from a murder charge. Worse, when he realizes to his dismay that he’s in possession of evidence which can blow open a monstrous national conspiracy, he is faced with a moral dilemma for which there is no right answer.

In the present-day story, vicious New Orleans mob enforcers and a mystery man from Washington, all with urgent, lethal agendas, descend on Moab – and Packard. He must outwit them – and solve the mystery of the Sixteenth Man. Along the way he receives unexpected help from an aging former showgirl who’s convinced the Sixteenth Man was her lover, and from a lovely young woman, Kate Norris, who believes the anomalous skeleton was her grandfather. While saving their own lives Packard and Kate fall in love, figure out how and why Charlie died, uncover the reason for a series of vicious murders that began long ago – and find the incriminating evidence Charlie possessed – evidence that has eluded the heavies for decades.

In the final days of 1963, the wily, pragmatic PI faces the unfortunate truth that if he attempts to expose the bad guys it will cost him his life – and justice won’t be served anyway. So, torn by that reality, plus escalating personal complications, knowing he’s probably going to be killed no matter what, he embarks on what he hopes will at least help his loved ones – an ingenious, daring, truly outrageous extortion scheme.

Driven by Packard, Charlie, and the shadowy people who will do anything to retrieve the evidence, these two suspenseful stories come together, both of them reaching their dramatic conclusions high on a narrow cliff in Muleshoe Canyon.

In the end, Charlie learns that even the most careful planning cannot compete with fate. And Packard learns a lot about himself, survival, almost everything about Charlie Callan – and the truth – most of it, anyway – of who killed President John F. Kennedy.