The Necessary Murder of Nonie Blake
A Samuel Craddock Mystery
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4.4 • 73 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Nonie Blake is back home from a mental institution where she has spent the last twenty years, and people are worried. Maybe too worried, for within a week of her return, Nonie is murdered. Police Chief Samuel Craddock thinks the only possible suspects are members of her tight-lipped family. Ever since Nonie tried to kill her sister when she was fourteen and was sent away to the institution, the family has kept to itself. Clues are scarce and Craddock is stumped. So he checks with therapists at the mental hospital to see whether they can add anything useful to his investigation. But he discovers that she has not been there for ten years. Now Craddock has to find out where Nonie has been all this time. Soon Craddock finds himself dealing not only with murder, but layers of deception and secrets, and in the midst of it all—a new deputy, one Maria Trevino, sent by the sheriff to beef up security in the small town of Jarrett Creek.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Shames's engrossing fifth Samuel Craddock mystery (after 2015's A Deadly Affair at Bobtail Ridge), the return of Winona "Nonie" Blake, who was sent to an institution near Dallas 20 years earlier, at age 14, after she tried to hang her younger sister, has the town of Jarrett Creek, Tex., talking especially when Nonie is soon after found dead. When Craddock, Jarrett Creek's police chief, investigates, Nonie's uncooperative relatives attempt to keep some mysterious family secret hidden. Maria Trevino, a brash young deputy sent from Houston, provides Craddock with valuable assistance and teaches the affable old lawman a thing or two about modern police work. The discovery that Nonie was released from the institution 10 years earlier, not recently as Craddock was assuming, raises the stakes. The authentic small-town ambiance, a cast of meticulously developed characters, and Craddock's easygoing, first-person narrative should more than satisfy series fans.
