Hangdog Hill

Grundy County, Tennessee. 1946.

In Beckin's Gap, the law was just a rumor. Dr. Lancaster intended to change that.

He lasted only a few weeks as mayor before someone had him killed.

His daughter Cole is twenty-three, spoiled rotten, and constitutionally incapable of being told what to do. She is also the last person the men behind her father's murder expected to be a problem.

They underestimated her significantly.

The deeper Cole pushes into what her father uncovered — a local machine built on fear, disappearances, and the kind of violence that survives by teaching people to stay quiet — the more dangerous she becomes. When the men responsible decide she is more useful as bait than as a witness, the trap closes around her.

Police Chief Gavan Lafitte — Cajun, Medal of Honor Marine, and dangerous by temperament — promised Cole's father he would protect her. What he did not anticipate was that protecting Cole Lancaster and controlling Cole Lancaster were two entirely different problems.

Hangdog Hill is Southern Appalachian noir about buried violence, civic corruption, and a reckless young woman who makes an expensive nuisance of herself in the direction of the truth.

In Beckin's Gap, silence was never peace. It was control.