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Overview
"Still recovering both physically and emotionally from the brutal murder of her husband, financial consultant Bay Tanner finds herself enmeshed in crime when a shirttail cousin, Mercer Mary Prescott, drops disastrously into her life." "Jailed for vagrancy, Mercer appeals to Bay's father, a wheelchair-bound retired judge. Vulnerable one moment, sly and secretive the next, the scruffy young woman seems obsessed with the history of Bay's aristocratic family. Her prying is interrupted, however, when she is hauled from the Judge's antebellum mansion and charged with trespassing at a nearby nuclear facility." Bay's relief at the departure of her meddlesome cousin is short-lived as a procession of dangerous characters come gunning for Mercer, now on the run after escaping from her police escort. When Bay's housekeeper is viciously attacked, she launches her own search, enlisting the aid of computer wizard Erik Whiteside and her brother-in-law, sheriff's deputy Red Tanner. As the body count rises and Bay finds herself confronted by a group of ruthless anti-nuke fanatics, only Mercer can explain the connection between the terrors of the present and the long-buried secrets of Perdition House.Synopsis
From Charleston To Hilton Head, Family Matters...And Murder Is Relative.
When a fifth cousin twice removed calls Bay Tanner - a young, recently widowed, financial consultant - from the Beaufort County Jail, it's no accident. Mercer Mary Prescott spent a lot of time and trouble locating Bay on the family tree, and she needs more than bail out of the relationship. What she's really after is a secret she's not willing to reveal-yet. But when Bay generously takes Mercer back to the family mansion of Presqu'isle, she finds that this distant kin comes with a lot of personal baggage-and some very dangerous pursuers. Before Bay can help straighten out Mercer's problems, the mousy young woman disappears. Now, Bay begins a desperate hunt for her "shirttail" cousin through the twisted alleys of the past, from Civil War days to a plantation called Perdition House and to one last deadly fight.
"The suspense ratchets up periodically, the characters are well drawn and unique, and the writing evokes the new South without resorting to stereotype. Best of all, Bay makes a believable and appealing protagonist." -The Cleveland Plain Dealer
"The finely spun plot makes Bay's latest a taut, tasty chiller." -Kirkus Reviews
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Publishers Weekly
Perhaps only a Southerner would credit the claim of kinship from a "half fifth cousin," especially one whose introductory phone call comes from the county jail where she's charged with vagrancy. But Lydia Baynard Simpson Tanner, better known as "Bay," does, with serious consequences, in Wall's third Low Country (South Carolina) mystery (after 2002's And Not a Penny More). With a rich family history and some wealth to go with it, Bay is still coming to terms with her husband's murder. Bay and her father, retired judge Talbot Simpson, and Erik Whiteside, a young computer whiz, operate Simpson & Tanner Inquiry Agents, a kind of quasi-detective agency. Bay's "shirttail" cousin, Mercer Mary Prescott, comes with a lot of baggage, baggage that will endanger them all. Abandoned by her mother, raised by foster parents, married (maybe) at a young age to a violent man, Mercer is a powder keg. Bay will make some surprising discoveries about the family tree and find some unexpected strengths in some of its members. Wall nicely blends the manners and mores of the aristocratic Southern tradition with more modern sensibilities, creating in Bay Tanner a woman who's equally at home in the tea room or out jogging. Despite a somewhat sprawling plot and less than scintillating prose, fans of cozier regional mysteries will be well pleased. (June 2) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.