Source Unverified

Lights. Camera. A very inconvenient corpse. A witty genealogy cozy mystery where the biggest family reveal may be a lie.

When the celebrity-ancestry show Branches rolls into Kettle Kill, genealogist Greta Hollenbeck lands the local-researcher job. The production has a movie star, a picturesque Hudson River location, and a sensational ancestor ready for his close-up: a river pirate.

What could possibly go wrong with a family tree assembled for television? Greta is about to find out. Behind the cameras, professional rivalries and the pressure to deliver a perfect reveal leave little room for inconvenient questions about original sources.

Then the show's on-camera genealogist is found dead in the old ice house. A scan in a research file and the original river-court records do not tell the same story, and Greta must work out who knew the difference. In a production built around controlling what people learn and when they learn it, nearly everyone has had practice keeping something off screen.

With her glamorous research rival circling and Jonah responding to a little celebrity attention in his own quiet way, Greta has plenty to untangle. Source Unverified, Book 8 of The Kinfinder Genealogy Mysteries, combines a complete murder puzzle with television-set satire, small-town warmth, and the pleasure of catching a false family story in the act.

For readers who love:

•   Behind-the-scenes television chaos and dry humor

•   Celebrity ancestry and unreliable family trees

•   Original-document clues that overturn a polished story

•   A sharp woman sleuth, a loyal greyhound, and a gentle romance

•   Clean cozy mysteries in a Hudson Valley river town