DISCO DEAD

A do-gooder gets a new mission as part of an amateur sleuthing group that's working on a murder from the disco era.

Hannah Ives is one of those people who’s always doing something. She informs her adult daughter, Emily, whom she runs into at the crowded Annapolis Trader Joe’s, that her next stop is the cemetery, where she’s been taking pictures of headstones for relatives who may not be able to see them in person through FindAGrave.com (a real website). Emily can’t help but tease Hannah about her constant do-something nature, but Hannah’s involvement with all sorts of projects has brought her a lot of joy and a lot of experience solving mysteries. At St. Luke’s Cemetery some 20 minutes later, Hannah runs into Isabel Randall, from local station WBNF-TV, who recognizes Hannah from her 18 previous investigations. After Izzy tells Hannah the story of Amy Madison, a young woman killed by an unknown assailant after a night at a popular local disco in 1978, Hannah joins Izzy and the group of citizen detectives who call themselves the Silent Sleuths in an effort to find out what happened to Amy and give her poor parents some relief. Her meticulous research uses DNA details found at the scene to suggest a shocking twist: Amy’s murder may not be an isolated event but the first work of a serial killer. Worse yet, if the Silent Sleuths can’t find evidence the killer has been stopped, is it possible that he could kill again?

The telling details that urge readers along the way might even end up teaching them something.