It's
smooth sailing for Eve Appel and her friend Madeleine, owners of Second to None
Consignment Shop in rural Florida's Sabal Bay, land of swamps, cowboys, and
lots and lots of 'gators. Eve and her detective boyfriend Alex have joined
Madeleine and her new beau David Wilson for a pleasure cruise on his boat. But
cloudy, dangerous waters lie ahead. A near fatal encounter with Blake Reed,
David's supremely nasty neighbor, is soon followed by a shooting death on the
dividing line between David and Blake's land. Both men run sport-hunting
reserves, but Blake imports "exotics" from Africa and promotes gator
killing, while David stays within the law, pointing clients toward the abundant
quail and turkey as well as the wild pigs that ravage the landscape.
Nevertheless, when a mutual client is killed, it is David who is arrested and
charged with murder.
Blake's
nastiness is only exceeded by that of his wife, Elvira, who forces Eve and
Madeleine out of their shop, intending to replace it with a consignment shop of
her own. It seems that bad luck looms over them all, even Eve's brawny and
hard-to-resist Miccosukee Indian friend Sammy, whose nephew has disappeared. As
the case against David grows stronger and his friends' misfortunes multiply,
Eve and her strange and diverse group of friends, including her ex, a mobster,
her grandma, and Sammy's extended family, band together to take on the bad
guys. But the waters are getting muddier and more troubled, and Eve and
Madeleine may end up inundated in every sense of the word.
A Sporting Murder from Camel Press, release date July 15th
Buy links:
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. A Sporting Murder follows the first two
books in the Eve Appel mystery series, A
Secondhand Murder and Dead in the Water
Visit her on her website: www.lesleyadiehl.com
and
her blog: www.lesleyadiehl.com/blog
Facebook: Lesley.diehl.1@facebook.com
