COVENANT HALL

Private investigator Bay Tanner takes an urgent case that can only be solved by unearthing buried secrets.

Joline Eastman’s daughter Kimmie is dying of leukemia, and so far no bone marrow match has been found. So Joline asks Bay to find some long-estranged family members who might help. For some reason, however, she refuses to talk about Kimmie’s father, who would seem the most likely match, and her current husband is strangely reluctant to have Bay search for other family members. In addition, Bay has her own problems. As her beloved father, retired Judge Talbot Simpson, lies in the hospital with worsening heart problems, she discovers the obituary he wrote for himself. Shockingly, the obituary reveals that Bay has a sister. Her father’s longtime companion Lavinia Smalls is obviously hiding something from Bay, but with Kimmie at death’s door, Bay has to let it go. Luckily, her strained relationship with her brother-in-law Red, who’s also her fiancé, improves when he quits the police force and Bay hires him as an investigator in hope of uncovering some of the many long-hidden secrets of the South Carolina lowlands. While Bay winkles out the relatives she hopes can be a donor for Kimmie, she coincidentally finds the sister she never knew existed, along with a tale of misunderstanding and tragedy.

The latest case for Bay (The Mercy Oak, 2008, etc.) is tense, introspective and hard to put down.