Florida Panhandle Mysteries

The 1950s come to life in this classic cozy mystery set in northern Florida in the Eisenhower era, complete with Johnny Ray on the jukebox and a Womanless Wedding-this one interrupted by an explosion at a moonshine still. Lily Trulock, owner of Trulock's Grocery & Marine Supply, leads a pretty quiet life until a stranger comes to town. The new guy's not what he appears, but then, some of St. Elmo's residents aren't either. Before she can say, "down the hatch," Lily's at the center of a vicious murder and a no-holds-barred bootlegging war-and a nasty storm's on the way. This is a vibrant, atmospheric, powerful novel-as filled with energy, mystery, and motion as a hurricane.

As intricate as a fisherman's net, Riptide fairly writhes with sinister delights-family secrets, family feuds, lost family fortunes, betrayals, puzzles, sunken treasure... and murder, of course. With a bit of illicit romance and treachery thrown in for seasoning, this rife atmosphere swirls around New York artist Isabel Anders, who's summoned home to tiny St. Elmo, Florida to deal with an emergency: the aunt who raised her has been brutally-and mysteriously-injured. Isabel arrives to find the family mansion in ruins, her aunt living in a trailer, and, dangerous as a cottonmouth, the lover she left at sixteen just where he used to be. Waiting for her. Except now he's got a grudge against her, a secret of his own, and some unsavory companions. Just when Isabel's aunt seems to be getting better (but before she's able to talk again) she dies just as mysteriously as she was injured. Suspecting murder, Isabel quickly ties her aunt's death to another. But to find the killer, she has to hack her way through a small-town jungle of intrigue and several generations of interrelated secrets, producing hours of pulse-pounding delight for the confirmed puzzle fan.

In all the years of their marriage, Clara Trent's husband failed to mention his involvement in a murder-and now he's not only dead himself, but accused of committing it. When St. Elmo sheriff's investigator Aaron Malone re-opens the forty-year-old cold case, Ronan Trent's named-posthumously-as the killer of his previous lover, a vivacious blonde with a jealous husband. Clara's discovery of sensuous drawings of the woman, unlike any of her husban's other work, reveals a carefully concealed obsession. As she tries to reconcile her recently deceased husband with the facts of the brutal bludgeoning, she's led back to the scene of the crime, a shabby fifties-style motor court where, as befits a dedicated detective, she takes a room to investigate. Aaron tries to warn her she may be stirring up a hornet's nest, but she proceeds to pursue the truth with the tenacious grip of a drowning swimmer on a lifeline. And the hornet's nest materializes-folks are definitely riled up; some of them are even turning up dead.