A Murder In Passing

The Blackman & Robertson Detective Agency faces a disturbing reality: no clients. So when Nakayla Robertson suggests a mushroom hunt at the historic, freed-slave commune The Kingdom of the Happy Land, Sam Blackman reluctantly agrees. Hunting the elusive edible, he stumbles into a rotting log...with a skeleton hidden inside. As intrigued as Sam is, this isn;t his case. So the local authorities tell him to butt out. Then Marsha Montgomery comes to Asheville asking Sam and Nakayla to investigate a 45-year-old burglary at her mother;s home. Someone stole a rifle and a photograph of Marsha;s mother, grandmother, and great grandmother taken in 1932 by renowned photographer Doris Ulmann. The site of the photograph is The Kingdom of the Happy Land. Marsha;s visit is no coincidence. Sam;s being played. But why?When Marsha;s 85-year-old mother Lucille is arrested for murder, Sam knows there is something amiss. Is the skeleton that of Jimmy Lang, Lucille;s lover and Martha;s father, a white man who disappeared in 1967? It appears that Jimmy had been willing to walk away from a budding family empire to marry Lucille. So why had Lucille, who is black, refused to marry him? Did others stand to benefit from Jimmy;s disappearance? A veil of betrayal and deceit hides a killer desperate to protect a dark secret, and no one, not even Sam, is safe from the deadly consequences of a murder in passing.