DEATH ON A WINTER STROLL

Christmas and death come to Nantucket.

U.S. Secretary of State Janet Brimhold McKay; her husband, Ron; and his unsatisfactory, artistic son, Ansel, are in Nantucket for Christmas Stroll, a beloved island tradition. Also on the island is a film crew that's staying at the compound of wealthy tech genius Mike Struna, an old friend of ambitious director Carly Simpson-Sonnenfeld and her much older husband, Vic, a womanizer who runs a powerful talent agency. The two disparate groups are linked by a talented nature photographer squatting in a falling-down house. Ansel McKay and Winter Candler, daughter of movie star Chris Candler, strike up a friendship after a chance meeting in town. Both have serious problems, and both are often shadowed by their parents’ security teams. Ansel, who had long believed his father’s story that his cocaine-addicted mother left him and later died, has now identified her as Mary Alice Fillmore, a celebrated photographer who’s squatting in her family home, which Ron McKay vengefully left to rot. When Mary Alice is murdered, Police Chief Merry Folger and her staff have their hands full since many of the suspects are powerful people who don’t take kindly to her questions. Then Vic Sonnenfeld goes missing. Once his shotgunned body is found in a nature reserve, Merry has no dearth of suspects in a challenging case of powerful people and tangled love/hate relationships.

Plenty of fascinating characters and myriad motives make for an exciting read.