Edgar Award-winning and New York Times best-selling author Margaret Maron has earned a starred review from Publishers Weekly for this smalltown saga starring Judge Deborah Knott and her new husband Dwight Bryant, chief deputy of Colleton County, NC. When local handyman J.D. Rouse is found dead in his pickup truck with a bullet in his head, the mayhem-and the body count-grows. But Dwight launches his own investigation after his son and ex-wife turn up missing from their home in Virginia.