Sanctuary Hill
A Bay Tanner Mystery
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Towering live oaks guard old secrets and powerful forces that even the spirited Bay Tanner can't control. . . .
A freak summer storm has Bay Tanner, sometime private investigator, cooped up with her ailing father at his antebellum mansion near Hilton Head. Desperate for a distraction, Bay recovers a cooler bobbing along on the incoming tide. What she discovers inside will plunge her into a world of ancient magic where the power of the "root" has held sway since the days of the slave row. Suddenly, mysterious people and strange incidents, including a near-fatal accident, force her to realize that she may have unleashed something she can neither understand nor escape.
Meanwhile, her investigation into the simple case of a runaway wife turns deadly. The police are eager to nail the wealthy, prominent husband for murder, but Bay's instincts tell her there's more to the story. Sheriff's Sergeant Red Tanner, her late husband's brother, warns her off the case, but Bay's never been good at taking orders. Soon she's working full-time to defend her client, who may not be as innocent as Bay would like to believe.
Time and again, every trail leads back to a mystical commune in the tangled backwoods of Beaufort County and to one of its leaders, a charismatic woman who believes in the real and malevolent power of the old ways. To find a killer, Bay must travel to the heart of this woman's world—and not everyone will escape the spell of Sanctuary Hill.
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When brassy South Carolina PI Bay Tanner uncovers the corpse of a newborn baby in her winning seventh outing (after 2006's Bishop's Reach), her brother-in-law, who happens to be a cop, tells her in no uncertain terms to stay out of it. But Bay is convinced that the strange charm the baby girl wore around her neck is the key to determining her identity, and the identity of her parents (who may be the baby's murderers). Meanwhile, a local real estate developer has hired Bay to find his wife. When the lovely blonde turns up dead, Bay must decide whether to help clear her client of suspicion. She believes he's innocent, but his drunkenly shacking up with another woman before his wife's body is cold doesn't help his case. If that's not enough, Bay's personal life heats up, as two men bid for her attentions. Wall once again delivers credible characters, a gripping plot and pitch-perfect local color.