Jack Mactaggart Mystery

A newly minted member of Henley & Hargrove, Pasadena's oldest and snobbiest law firm, Jack MacTaggart is assigned to handle an insurance claim on behalf of socialite Sydney Everett. Hush Puppy, Sydney's champion show horse, has died unexpectedly, and attending veterinarian George Wells confides to Jack that the great horse's death was anything but natural. Jack's investigation leads him into the high-stakes world of professional show jumping and down a path to romance, intrigue, and an old blackmail scheme that further implicates his client. After Jack reports his findings, another body is discovered. And this one is human.

Award-winning author Chuck Greaves returns with the rollicking sequel to his acclaimed debut novel, Hush Money. US Senate candidate Warren Burkett has a history of marital infidelity. Three weeks before Election Day, Burkett comes to the aid of a beautiful green-eyed lady, only to find himself alone and naked in a stranger's home from which a priceless painting is missing. As the resulting scandal threatens to tilt the election, the painting turns up in a most unexpected place-and so does a dead body. Hired to defend Burkett and unravel the deepening mystery, Jack MacTaggart must traverse a minefield of ruthless politicians, felonious art dealers, swarming paparazzi, the amorous wife of Burkett's billionaire opponent, her mobbed-up brother, and a district attorney with an old score to settle. With the electoral clock ticking and the press following his every move, Jack's investigation leads him on a roller-coaster ride through the lofty heights and gritty depths of Southern California, lending new meaning to the adage that all's fair in love and politics.

An intriguing new case lures attorney Jack MacTaggart to the rarified air of California wine country in order to investigate the death of an heir to a Napa Valley empire.Monsieur Giroux is not a happy man. Of course, who could be happy while discussing the death of their son? Without an heir, his Château Giroux winery will be inherited by another family member, its grapes plowed under to make way for a lucrative real-estate deal. Yet Giroux believes that his son may still be alive and hires MacTaggart to investigate.In the third entry in his Shamus Award–nominated series of legal mysteries, author-and sometimes vigneron-Chuck Greaves blends themes of greed and vanity, rivalry and revenge, bottles them with an unexpected murder, and pours forth a plummy magnum of page-turning mystery about a privileged but deeply dysfunctional American family.