Somewhere in Utah County, a treasure waits to be discovered. The coins called Brigham's Bees were works of art. Using a makeshift stamping mill fashioned from a Mexican War cannon, master engraver and Mormon Bishop Samuel Woodbury hammered out a treasury for Brigham Young in the wilderness of the Rocky Mountains -- more than 3,000 gold coins. However, none of them were ever spent. On a cold autumn day in 1862, Bishop Woodbury disappeared with Brigham Young's Treasury of Deseret while enroute to Salt Lake City. Some say Woodbury absconded with the treasure to California. Others say he was a Confederate sympathizer and the Mormon gold ended up in the coffers of the Richmond government where it helped fund the slaughter of the Civil War. Still others say Woodbury was murdered and the treasure stolen. Over the years, the legend of Brigham's Bees lured many a fortune seeker into its dark secrets. And one by one, those connected with the treasure died. More than a century later, with the legend of Brigham's Bees long faded into the stuff of campfire tales, someone is still killing for the secret of Bishop Woodbury. On a black night in Payson Canyon, Deputy Sheriff Brent Merrell and his K-9 partner, Gadianton, narrowly avoid becoming victims of the mysterious legend. Armed with a single battered coin he finds hanging from a tree in the canyon, Brent digs deep into the mysterious legend of Samuel Woodbury. Each move puts him closer to the missing treasure and closer to an untimely death.
About the Author: Raised in a military family, Robert Kirby has lived in Europe and most of the western United States. He is a graduate of Skyline High School in Salt Lake City, and attended Weber State College, in Ogden, Utah. He served an LDS mission to Uruguay in 1973-1975, after which he married Irene Jones from Calgary, Alberta. They now live in Herriman, Utah without their three daughters, whom they raised in Springville, Utah, but with their mean dog. In 1979, Kirby attended the Utah Police Academy. He was a police officer for eleven years until he resigned to become the editor of the Utah County Journal. After a year, Kirby voluntarily became assistant editor in order to devote more time to writing fiction. Kirby's work has appeared in a number of law enforcement magazines under the name of John "Blitz" Kreeg. For two years he wrote a weekly column in the Springville Herald under the pseudonym, Mark Conroy. Brigham's Bees is Kirby's first novel. His second novel, Dark Angel, is also available from Leicester Bay Books along with his numerous books on humor derived from his tenure as the Editorial Columnist for the Salt Lake Tribune over the last several decades.