A police officer’s past relationship with a wealthy family poses problems for a murder case.
Billy Able, the most successful detective in the Memphis PD, responds with his partner, Frankie Malone, to the scene of a crime in a buffalo pasture at Shelby Farm. The dead woman was found by a very likely suspect, an ex-con who was about to make off with her cash when help arrived. But Billy (The Gone Dead Train, 2014, etc.) quickly discovers that the crime won’t be so easy to solve. He’s shocked to identify the dead woman, who’s wearing a handmade lace wedding dress and driving a muscle car whose vanity plates say SPARROW, as Caroline Lee, an old friend. Billy’s known the wealthy Lee family, which owns a large plantation, a bank, and a law firm, from the time he lived with his uncle and helped him run a diner near their home. The Lees considered Billy’s father white trash, but his mother was a member of a Southern society family, and Billy had a high school romance with Caroline before she went off to college and became a lawyer. Because he'd had almost no contact with her for years, he’s allowed to work the case, though he soon finds that his past with her family may be more hindrance than help in plumbing their many secrets. Caroline had recently broken off her engagement to a high-powered doctor from a wealthy Indian family who had been trying furiously to get her to return to him. So who was she on her way to marry the night she was shot? Billy must take a painful in-depth look at the Lee family’s past, and his own.
A well-wrought procedural that takes a hard look at the old South’s influence on the new.