Part of Meg Langslow, book 14
First published 2012
Meg Langslow works her forge at Caerphilly Days, a summer arts festival that masks a desperate secret. Her town lost all its public buildings to foreclosure, but town clerk Phineas Throckmorton refuses to surrender. He has barricaded himself in the courthouse basement for over a year, supplied through a hidden Civil War era tunnel that connects to the bandstand. The festival crowds provide perfect cover for smuggling food and supplies to Throckmorton while drowning out the screech of the rusty tunnel door. Everything unravels when a lender executive turns up shot dead, apparently killed from inside Throckmorton's basement hideout. Someone wants to frame the stubborn clerk and end his siege. Meg realizes the real murderer seeks to bury information that could help Caerphilly reclaim its seized buildings. She must identify the killer before the lender destroys crucial evidence and before Throckmorton takes the blame for a crime he did not commit.
Genres: fiction, mystery, crime, contemporary
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, suspenseful
Tropes: amateur-sleuth, found-family
Setting: Caerphilly, Caerphilly Days
Period: Civil War
344 pages · Hardcover · St. Martin's Minotaur