The Flats Don't Lie: A Chesapeake Bay Marine Salvage Cozy Mystery (THE TERRAPIN NECK MYSTERIES)

Product Description

Marlow Crockett knows the Chesapeake flats well enough to understand one rule: water may hide evidence, but it rarely destroys the truth completely.Back in Terrapin Neck and helping run her family's marine salvage business, Marlow is still adjusting to life beside her recovering father, Gerald, and his loyal Chesapeake Bay Retriever, Skipjack. She has enough to manage without getting involved in another local dispute.Then Wade Purnell turns up dead.Wade had been asking uncomfortable questions about waterfront property, old access rights, and transactions that could reshape the community. He had also crossed paths with people who had plenty to lose if those questions were answered.Soon, evidence begins pointing uncomfortably close to Crockett & Sons.A familiar service gate. Marine equipment. Messages that appear to connect Marlow to movements she never made.Someone is not simply hiding a murder.Someone is building a story around her.With Sheriff Odessa Tull forced to follow the evidence wherever it leads and conservation officer Holt Ferris refusing to offer reassurance without proof, Marlow has to do something harder than defend herself. She has to separate what she knows from what she wants to believe.The deeper she digs, the more Wade's murder begins to look connected to something larger than one dead man: disputed waterfront rights, altered paperwork, a corporate buyer with a growing interest in Terrapin Neck, and old questions Marlow has never managed to leave behind.To clear her name, she must find the flaw in a carefully manufactured version of events before the tide carries away what remains.The Flats Don't Lie is the first book in The Terrapin Neck Mysteries, an atmospheric Chesapeake Bay cozy mystery series featuring marine salvage, small-town secrets, a smart female amateur sleuth, a realistic working dog, family drama, and a slow-burn investigative partnership.