A small Mississippi river town is the unlikely site of a Mafia vendetta.
Genealogist and super-snoop Torie O’Shea is settling into her role as head of the New Kassel Historical Society after inheriting Gaheimer House, its headquarters and a good deal of money (Thicker Than Water, 2005). Her stepfather, Colin Brooke, is running for mayor against incumbent Bill Castlereagh, and when journalist Sam Hill, no friend of the mayor, asks Torie to investigate the genealogy of them both, she discovers that there’s something distinctly odd about Castlereagh’s. In the meantime, a Chicago Mafioso checks into the local B&B, a body falls off a parade float at the feet of Torie’s teenaged daughter and motorcyclists shoot at hayride passengers enjoying the fall festival. Closer to home, Torie overhears her husband repeatedly congratulated for getting her to move out of town, where her snoopy, bossy ways might be tempered, or at least muffled. The sheriff’s new deputy, who seems to have taken an instant dislike to Torie, keeps especially close watch on her when her next-door neighbors, the mayor and his wife, vanish. And when her research into the mayor’s family tree finally turns up a Mafia connection, she must survive threats from the mob before she can help solve the case and put her marriage on a new course.
Indefatigable Torie may irk her men, but her exploits do keep you amused.