Sylvia Dickey Smith
Rookie P.I. Sidra Smart thinks she knows where she’s headed. But when Sid’s second case requires that she clear the name of a dead man, she finds herself confounded by clues that lead nowhere. She will have to face a baffling series of crimes, a burned-out office, the disappearance of a local preacher’s wife, and the recurring suspicion that answers lurk in the alligator-infested bayous and murky swamps of the Texas/Louisiana border region. To boot, Sid moves into a ghost-active house and discovers that the past, with tales going back to the Civil War and a spectral hotel-keeper’s journal, might hold the key to the lives of those trapped in an unholy web of deception that spans decades. In this exciting mystery, Sid finds herself crawling through more than one window, fighting off paramours, and generally establishing herself as a feisty, stubborn female P.I. willing to try ’most anything to fight injustice in and around the colorful town of Orange.