Part of Series
Family secrets and internal police politics cause trouble for Sheriff Hank Worth and his Chief Deputy Sheila Turley in this compelling mystery. Hank Worth has always been committed to his job as Branson sheriff, so getting him to take a break is difficult. But to everyone's surprise he agrees to take time off after a grueling case and visit a friend in Columbia, Missouri, leaving Chief Deputy Sheila Turley in charge. She quickly launches reforms that create an uproar, and things deteriorate even further when an elderly man is found brutally murdered in his home. As Sheila struggles for control of the investigation and her insubordinate deputies, Hank is not relaxing as promised. His Aunt Fin is worried her husband is responsible for the disappearance of one of his employees, and Hank agrees to investigate. The search for the missing woman leads to a tangle of deceit that Hank is determined to unravel . . . no matter the impact on his family.
Author
Claire Booth is a journalist and author who has written about crime for decades. She’s covered everything from the theft of the Aston Martin used in the James Bond film Goldfinger to the Laci Peterson murder and the San Francisco dog mauling case, where two lawyers were convicted of killing their neighbor with vicious dogs they kept for an imprisoned friend. She also covered the case of Taylor Helzer, a Northern California man who convinced two followers he was a prophet of God. In order to raise money for their end-of-days scheme, the group extorted money from a retired couple and then killed them and three others to cover their tracks. The tremendously complicated quintuple murder case is the basis for her first book, the non-fiction The False Prophet: Conspiracy, Extortion and Murder in the Name of God. After living with that case for so long, Claire decided she’d had enough of the real world and turned to fiction. Her first novel, The Branson Beauty, features county sheriff Hank Worth. The second in the series is Another Man’s Ground and the third, A Deadly Turn, comes out March 1, 2019.
