Dead Wreckoning

Sidra Smart's search for an elusive pirate schooner stirs up a bayou bonanza of treasure hunters, smugglers, and the spirits of the infamous Jean Lafitte and his pirate queen, Mary Anne Radcliff. New P.I. Sid Smart, ex-preacher's wife, is back for another puzzling case, as she tackles the strange tale of Boo Murphy, who has just been accused of murder. When Boo tells a tale of stumbling on the Hotspur, Lafitte's privateering schooner, half-buried in a Texas swamp, most everyone is convinced she's not telling the whole truth. As Sidra searches for both the schooner and evidence to clear her client, she begins to suspect that her trusted mentor and friend George Léger is involved in something fishy as well. What would she do without the help of companions Aunt Annie and Slider, her faithful mongrel pooch? The dangerous investigation takes Sidra from the small town of Orange, Texas, out into the nearby bayous. Interwoven families and feuding neighbors muddy the clues, swirling from past to present, as elusive as a spectral schooner. Will the answer be found in the legend of Lafitte and the voluptuous, swashbuckling Mary Anne Radcliff, sailing through the adventures of this third Sidra Smart mystery? SYLVIA DICKEY SMITH is the author of the Sidra Smart mystery series and an award-winning World War II homefront novel, A War of Her Own. She lives in Georgetown, Texas. "Move over Stephanie Plum and Annie Darling. There's a new sassy sleuth on the scene and boy, is she a firecracker!" – Chick Lit Cafe