DARK AURA

A little California town peopled by aging hippies and their younger counterparts provides the unlikely setting for murder.

Part-time deputy sheriff Carla Day (Erased From Memory, 2006, etc.) is again drawn into a mystery by her father Edward, a retired Egyptologist suffering from early-stage Alzheimer’s. He’s been visiting former flower child Susie, whose ex-husband Squeegee recently left her a house in the quaint community of Stanton’s Mill. Edward is in the crowd that witnesses the death of 15-year-old Tamina, a precocious young mother whose baby has been pronounced an indigo child by a self-proclaimed, recently arrived seer. Several local babies identified as having the indigo aura that makes them special have disappeared. Was Tamina’s deadly fall into the creek actually the murder of someone who knew too much? Arriving with sheriff Cherie Ghent in the aftermath of the tragedy, Carla is painfully aware that her relationship with Cherie has been on rocky ground ever since Cherie had an affair with Carla’s lifelong friend and lover, Susie’s son Rob, a doctor at a local hospital. Edward seems to know something about Tamina that would help, but facts only occasionally rise to the surface of his troubled memory. Carla’s task of untangling the relationship between Tamina’s death and the missing babies is complicated by another murder.

Sparkling and sensitive, Carla is a star.