Carolyn G. Hart_Henrie O_02

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In her last tantalizing mystery, Dead Man's Island, award-winning author Carolyn G. Hart gave us a colorful new heroine, seasoned ex-journalist turned sleuth Henrietta O'Dwyer Collins. Now Henrie O is back...this time investigating a brutal murder in a lovely southern town where wealth and privilege mask a hotbed of lies, sex, and deadly desperation.... Henrie O is looking forward to a peaceful holiday at her friend Margaret's Tennessee mountain cabin. But Henrie O awakens to find Margaret's nephew, his shirt stained with blood, his handsome face stricken by fear and horror.... Craig Matthews swears he didn't kill his wife, swears he didn't lure Patty Kay out to the playhouse on their lavish Fair Haven estate and leave her bloodied and dead. Why, then, did he run away? It's a question the authorities want answered, and when Craig cannot explain away the evidence found at the crime scene or the suspicion that he'd married - and now murdered - for money, Henrie O finds herself drawn into the thick of a life-and-death drama among the privileged residents of Fair Haven. For Margaret's sake she agrees to pursue the investigation and finds that as Craig's "aunt" she has instant entree into Fair Haven's best families. But the more Henrie O becomes privy to their deepest fears and most intimate secrets, the more she begins to question their motives. How had they really felt about Patty Kay Prentiss Matthews, a warm, vibrant woman whose forceful personality meant she'd always gotten her way? In this outwardly idyllic town, it seems there are many with reason to feel threatened: not only the widower, who claims he's a hapless victim in a cleverly devised frame-up, but Patty Kay's sullen nymphetof a daughter whose transparent love for her stepfather is anything but innocent; Patty Kay's irresistible ex-husband, who may never have released her; the dead woman's venomous, grasping sister; and even the ingratiating headmaster of the exclusive school where Patty Kay was a tr