From the Inside Flap
Arson to sanitize the murder of partners in a realty firm?
The only thing connecting the victims is the business, Blue Creek Realty. People aren't killed over real estate--not in rural Hawthorn County. As Richard, Guidry, and the boss interview the partners' widows, new deputy Kit Kittredge responds to a lost child report out near Devil's Run. There she notices something odd at the decommissioned lead smelter owned by the realty firm. Meanwhile, the killer continues to take care of business, and all the potential suspects are now potential targets. The murder book is thick, yet they have no leads or even a convincing motive--until they uncover something too big for a rural sheriff's department to handle.
From the Back Cover
Carter, Guidry, and Kit seek someone with the means, the motive, and the opportunity for the warehouse fire murders. But none of the possible suspects can verify where they were at the time of the crime, and the team can't come up with a plausible motive. The essence of investigation is the elimination of possible suspects, but the killer is already eliminating them--literally. The only thing for sure is that someone is covering their tracks and erasing links--but links to what?
For informally trained criminalist Carter the investigation becomes a twenty-four-seven obsession as usual. Kit is a talented rookie, short on experience, but not confidence. Guidry, a disgraced former New Orleans detective, has more major crime experience than the rest of the department combined, but he has a personal relationship with one of their suspects. He's also a regular resident in the sheriff's dog house for doing things his own way.
When Kit is shunted into a possible lost child and Guidry gets suspended, it all comes down to motive. Before they can discover the who they have to discover the why. And all the while, the fires burn.
About the Author
AR Simmons is a life-long resident of the eastern Missouri Ozarks. He lives in a place much like the setting of all the Blue Creek novels in the series. All the personalities are modeled after people he knows, however, he does take a lot of poetic license in reshaping them. The geography of the books comes only partly from his imagination. All places and features outside of Hawthorn County are real and realistically depicted.
His writing career began with science fiction short stories. He first attempted to write mystery/suspense stories in the early 2000s, the first effort being Bonne Femme, which produced Richard and Jill and gave them back story. Since that time, the two have been featured in eleven more novels, some mysteries, some thrillers, some a combination of the two. Like his main character Richard, he rises very early. He is an obsessive-compulsive writer, doing his best work in the wee hours before the rest of the household rises.
Today, he and his wife still live in a "county much like Hawthorn" on the farm his grandfather cleared from the native forest. His roots go four generations deep in this rocky Ozark soil. Using its culture, language, and mores, he writes culturally-immersive stories of obsession set amidst the small-town and rural life that he knows and loves
