A Murder in Passing

InAsheville, North Carolina, the Blackman & Robertson Detective Agency facesa disturbing reality: no clients. Sam Blackman finds inactivity intolerable, sowhen partner Nakayla Robertson suggests a mushroom hunt on the site of a historic freed-slave commune called the Kingdom of the Happy Land, Sam reluctantlyagrees. When he stumbles across a skeleton, his adventure mushrooms into a caseof murder. But it isn’t his case—he has no client—and the local authoritiestell him to butt out. ThenMarsha Montgomery comes to the office asking Sam and Nakayla to investigate aburglary at her mother’s home. In 1967 someone stole a rifle and a photograph ofMarsha’s mother, grandmother, and great grandmother taken in 1932 by renownedphotographer Doris Ulmann. Marsha’s visit is no coincidence: the photograph was taken at the Kingdom of the Happy Land.Sam’s being played, but why? WhenMarsha’s eighty-five-year-old mother Lucille is arrested for murder, Sam hashis answer and his case. Is the skeleton that of Jimmy Lang—Lucille’s loverand Marsha’s white father—who disappeared in 1967? Jimmy’s brother says no; Jimmy left to seek his fortune after Lucille rejected his marriageproposal. But others stood to gain from Jimmy’s disappearance. Aveil of betrayal and deceit hides a killer desperate to protect a dark secret,and no one—not even Sam—is safe from the deadly consequences.