Hidden Scars

July 24, 2017
In De Castrique’s superior sixth mystery featuring Asheville, N.C., PI Sam Blackman (after 2015’s A Specter of Justice), 80-year-old Violet Baker asks Sam to look into the suspicious death of her brother, Paul Weaver, a WWII vet who was a student at nearby Black Mountain College when he took a fatal fall into a ravine in 1946. With the aid of his detective agency partner, Nakayla Robertson, Sam investigates. Meanwhile, a movie that’s being filmed on the Black Mountain campus, based on a sappy romance novel set at the college around the time of Paul’s death, is plagued by sabotage. The stakes rise when a member of the movie crew, octogenarian Harlan Beale, who knew Weaver and has some information to share with Sam about the cold case, is murdered in the local library. Either someone is using the shadow of past misdeeds to cover up present crimes, the past isn’t really dead, or both. De Castrique combines an examination of the South’s troubled racial history with a smart probe of current political-financial shenanigans. Agent: Linda Allen, Linda Allen Literary Agency.

August 1, 2017
A Carolina private detective investigates a 70-year-old murder.Asheville shamus Sam Blackman (A Specter of Justice, 2015, etc.), who narrates in a relaxed and amiable first-person, thinks that he's simply humoring a nice old lady when he visits Violet Baker in her nursing home. But the very alert Violet has a compelling story to tell. Her brother, Paul Weaver, an Army veteran attending Black Mountain College on the GI Bill, died under mysterious circumstances in a hiking accident in 1948. Violet has a vivid childhood memory of two mysterious men visiting her family farm to deliver this news. When Sam's tart sidekick/lover Nakayla returns from vacation, the duo begins to investigate in earnest, starting with Roland Cassidy, who's doing research for a film set at the college during the same period. Cassidy pleads ignorance, but, oddly, director Marty Kolsrud requests a meeting with Sam and Nakayla. Marty treats them like VIPs, even taking them on-set to watch filming. But why? Their next stop is elderly mountain man Harlan Beale, who resembles a geriatric member of ZZ Top. His memory is fuzzy, but he does link Paul to the civil rights struggle of the era, during which he defended African-American students. Might there be a police report? The absence of any paperwork relating to a Paul Weaver simply makes Sam and Nakayla more determined to ferret out the truth. With a list of names provided by Beale, they set about digging up the past's long-buried secrets. De Castrique's sixth delivers a vivid gallery of suspects, lively dialogue, and an attractive pair of sleuths.

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October 1, 2017

Asheville, NC, private investigators Sam Blackman and Nakayla Robertson are asked by an elderly client to look into the death of her brother nearly 70 years ago. The coroner's report indicated that Paul Weaver's death resulted from a fall while hiking, but he knew the mountains well. A World War II vet, Paul had enrolled in the innovative and liberal Black Mountain College, now the subject of a film currently being shot at the school's old location. One of the movie crew, octogenarian Harlan Beale, knew Paul back in the day. He hints to Sam that he has discovered something related to Paul's death. But Harlan is killed before he can reveal his findings, and a second murder heats up the cold case and brings past secrets into the present. In this seventh outing (after A Specter of Justice), the relationship between Nakayla and Sam continues to delight, as does the humor that imbues the series. VERDICT With its strong sense of place, depiction of racial tension that still lingers in the new South, and appealing sleuths, de Castrique's well-plotted mystery is a winner.--ACT

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