AN ANECDOTAL DEATH

A private investigator tackles a politically sensitive case that changes his life.

Lovely, wealthy Meredith Winters wants Harry Brock (Beyond Redress, 2013, etc.) to look into the death of her husband, Amos Lansbury, who was spear fishing with three other men when he vanished. Although no body was found, he was declared dead, and though his death is ruled an accident, Meredith thinks it was murder. Lansbury ran Prentice Foster’s victorious down-and-dirty campaign for the state senate against Rycroft Tillman, and when some of the men Lansbury worked on the campaign with are also killed, Harry thinks it was murder too. Disquieted, he's tempted to retreat to his home in Bartram’s Hammock, a South Florida nature preserve, where his only neighbor is Tucker LaBeau, an elderly farmer who’s his friend and confidant. After several divorces and a painful love affair, Harry is in love with Holly Pike, who bought a ranch in Montana after her husband's murder made it painful for her to remain in Florida (Death’s Long Shadow, 2011). Holly begged Harry to come with her, but he clings to his life on the Hammock, his source of solace from all his mistakes. Although he has a great relationship with the sheriff’s department, political pressure keeps them from linking the murders into a single case. So Harry’s left on his own as he tries to figure out why so many people are being killed.

Although it isn’t his toughest mystery or the one with the most thrills, Harry’s 10th case is special because it cuts painfully close to his core.