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Overview
"When widowed financial consultant and sometime detective Bay Tanner flees Paris and the collapse of her short-lived affair with Interpol agent Alain Darnay, she finds herself drawn into yet another of the dark mysteries that seem to swirl around her father's antebellum mansion in Beaufort, South Carolina. No sooner has she unloaded her bags than she senses trouble between retired judge Talbot Simpson and his longtime housekeeper/companion, Lavinia Smalls. What - or who - has driven a wedge between the two people who have been the bedrock of Bay's existence since her childhood? Then a phone call from her partner in crime-solving, Erik Whiteside, sets in motion a chain of events that will expose the dark underbelly of the aristocratic local society in which she grew up." Erik's old college drinking buddy, archaeologist Gray Palmer, has uncovered a grave on an obscure island just off the South Carolina coast and hints that the bones it contains may be those of a murder victim. But before Bay and Erik can learn the details, Palmer turns up dead himself, and in a particularly gruesome way. Spurred on by Gray's exotic girlfriend and his estranged father's offer of a sizable reward, they methodically peel back the layers of deceit and cover-up carefully constructed over decades by those who have everything to lose if the grave injustices of Judas Island are ever brought to light.Synopsis
FROM HILTON HEAD'S SPARKLING BEACHES TO THE LOWCOUNTRY'S REMOTE ISLANDS, THE PAST IS NEVER DEAD...AND THE TRUTH CAN KILL.
After an abruptly-ended stay in Paris, Bay Tanner is more than happy to return home to South Carolina and immerse herself back into the tranquil scenery, small-town gossip, and affection of numerous concerned friends. But her peaceful return is short-lived when her fledgling detective agency gets a new client-Gray Palmer, an archeologist friend of Bay's sleuthing partner Erik Whiteside. While digging around one of the isolated coastal islands, Gray discovered a far-from-ancient body and wants help in identifying it. But it isn't long before Gray turns up dead in a freak boating accident ... or before it becomes plain that some very deadly people will do anything to stop an investigation. Now, Bay must travel the darkest byways of the past, from Charleston's historic streets to an infamous local island's shore to the heart of several civil-rights-era disappearances...and into a lethal confrontation.
"Tough and action packed."
-The Chicago Tribune
"Intriguing...Wall juggles the plot in entertaining and satisfying fashion."
-Orlando Sentinel
Publishers Weekly
Set in South Carolina's low country, Wall's cozy series featuring widowed accountant Bay Tanner gets better with each book. In her fourth outing (after 2003's Perdition House), Bay returns home from an extended stay in Paris to find that her father, the Simpson part of Simpson & Tanner, Inquiry Agents, is making regular and significant payments to a mysterious visitor. When Judge Simpson refuses to answer Bay's questions about what's going on, Bay is stumped. How could her father be a blackmailer's target? Meanwhile, an old college friend of computer expert Eric Whiteside, with whom Bay started Simpson & Tanner, is killed in a freak boating accident, leaving a not-so-grieving father and a girlfriend who insists the death was murder. Wall manages to keep several seemingly unconnected story lines in play, building suspense gradually until things fall neatly into place. Her greatest strength, however, is her heroine, who exudes self-confidence whether auditing the books of a shrimping company or consulting a forensics expert. Bay's wry observation on how middle-aged women are invisible to waitresses if an attractive man is nearby cuts to the bone, but is made without rancor. Wall should continue to build a following among fans of older female sleuths. Agent, Amy Rennert. (June 2) Forecast: Carolyn Hart, author of the light-as-a-feather Death on Demand series, also set in the low country, provides a blurb, but readers will find Bay closer in spirit to Deborah Knott, Margaret Maron's more nuanced mystery heroine. The atmospheric jacket art shows a magnolia trees with an unidentified Drayton Hall, one of South Carolina's finest plantation houses, in the distance. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.