Sabal Bay
consignment shop owner Eve Appel is fit to be tied--family tied. Just as she is
basking in the warmth of a renewed relationship with her long-lost Uncle
Winston, disaster strikes. He and his less welcome companion, Darlene, have
come for a visit, and their request to participate in one of rural Florida's
most popular tourist activities, an airboat ride through the swamps, ends with her
uncle being shot in the head. The killing looks suspiciously like a mob hit.
Turns out
Uncle Winston was "connected." Was he simply a bag man, or something
more? Who is Darlene, really, and how did Winston acquire three Russian
stepchildren, one of whom has been kidnapped by yet another mob family--this
one Russian? Winston claimed to prize family above all else, but what
"family" was he talking about: his niece Eve, his relations by
marriage, or his mobster employers?
When Eve's
best friend Madeleine is kidnapped, Eve doesn't know where to turn. Her
mob-boss buddy Nappi Napolitani? Her new Miccosukee Indian friend, the long,
lean, and luscious Sammy Egret? Her ex-husband, Jerry, who is in Nappi's
employ? With two mob families on her tail and her boyfriend, PI Alex
Montgomery, mostly away on assignment, Eve has to act fast. Before whoever
wrecked her car and left her to the mercy of the alligators finishes the job
they started.
Dead in the Water is the second book in the Eve Appel Mystery series, which
began with A Secondhand Murder.
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Lesley A. Diehl
Lesley retired from her life as a professor of psychology and
reclaimed her country roots by moving to a small cottage in the Butternut River
Valley in upstate New York.
In the winter she migrates to old Florida—cowboys,
scrub palmetto, and open fields of grazing cattle, a place where spurs still
jingle in the post office, and gators make golf a contact sport. Back north, the shy ghost inhabiting the
cottage serves as her literary muse.
When not writing, she gardens, cooks and renovates the 1874 cottage with
the help of her husband, two cats and, of course, Fred the ghost, who gives
artistic direction to their work.
She is the author of a number of mystery series and
mysteries as well as short stories. Dead in the Water follows the first book
in the Eve Appel mystery series, A
Secondhand Murder.
