Fatal Undertaking (Buryin' Barry Series)
Funeral director and part-time sheriff Barry Clayton’s latest case begins when local businessman and Jaycee member Archie Donovan asks to borrow a casket for a Halloween haunted house. The charity event turns into a murder investigation when the Jaycee president is murdered in the casket, and the national press descends upon sleepy Gainesboro, North Carolina. As Barry investigates, readers will learn that North Carolina has a new major cash crop, Christmas trees, and that the workers who tend the trees are sometimes illegal immigrants. The murder victim, son of a local power broker, had plenty of enemies; but he was not the person who was supposed to be the ghost in the casket. Was he murdered by mistake? Complicating matters is the fact that one of the reporters on the scene is Barry’s ex-wife, Rachel. In the fifth in his Undertaking series, de Castrique gives readers a tantalizing mystery full of humor and eccentric characters, along with a nice dollop of current social issues. --Barbara Bibel--This text refers to theHardcoveredition.