Carolyn Neville decides that her old friend Marvin should update his true-crime bestseller Darkness at Dawn for its 50th anniversary. Her skeptical boss agrees—on the condition that she’ll quit if it doesn’t sell.
Marvin goes to the mountain town of Motherlode, Colorado to gather new information about the unsolved murder of a beloved schoolteacher. When an attack by an unknown assailant puts Marvin in a coma, Carolyn and her sidekick Stephen Ames take up where he left off.
Carolyn makes friends with the murder victim’s sister, but tangles with a hostile local historian, a creepy motel manager and a lecherous mine owner. The investigation takes them to the bottom of a mine shaft and strands them in a blizzard as a killer with a gas can tries to send them out in a blaze of glory.
All Carolyn wants is to see her friend honored, his life celebrated, her boss humbled and a killer found.
For fans of Horace Rumpole, Monk and Stephanie Plum, the Carolyn Neville Mysteries are full of laugh-out-loud suspense.