Murder at Tidefall

About this book

A dam engineer walked out onto a frozen ledge a little after four in the morning and went into the river. The report blamed the weather. The dam has been knocking ever since.

Tidefall sits on the Sagasset River, sixty-odd miles inland from the Maine coast. Its mid-century dam was poured against stonework older than the state’s records.

Three years ago, city engineer Daniel Kelleher went out on a night inspection and didn’t come back. The official version calls it an accident. Kelleher had thirty-two years of knowing how concrete behaves under river pressure, and a gray field notebook whose last entry reads: I am going to use the word emergency.

SAM BLACKWOOD spent thirty years in homicide before she came home to Moonhaven and inherited her grandmother’s house, her dog, and her work. Four nodes along the coast are awake now. Then Sterling Vane sends her a folder misfiled under hydro investments when it belonged under foundational surveys, and a margin note from 1849: the fifth site, upriver.

The renovation on the table is a “comprehensive modernization” run by River Valley Energy Solutions. The company is a shell, and several layers down it resolves to Coastal Heritage Partners. The petition calls the site work cosmetic. The photographs say otherwise.

Down in the gallery, Sam puts her palm to the upstream wall and feels it: three beats, a pause, three beats. And on the night Kelleher died, Ezra felt one beat too many.

THE TEAM

Rowan Ashby, a physician whose research is in geophysics, who can read old stonework and a revised site plan side by side and explain why the plan is wrong

Moss, Eleanor’s Border Collie, who checks every pair of boots at supper and has never once barked in Tidefall

Ezra, dead for more than a century, speaking through the ring on Sam’s hand, exact about what he can and cannot confirm

Clara Vane, of the Tidefall Historical Committee and “the branch that inherited the guilt and none of the money,” the only objection on record when the council first waved the project through

And Sterling Vane, who wants to be there when Sam stands at the node. Sam isn’t sure yet that she wants him there.

THE MYSTERY

A coffee cup that nobody asked about. A contractor keycard that never came back. A maintenance log with entries printed after the man who should have signed them was dead. A state lieutenant who says the paper is enough for negligence but not for a charge, and a November county vote that could send the drilling rig in.

Somebody brought Daniel Kelleher down to that ledge. Sam is going to find out who, and she will meet that person face to face on the dam before dawn, with the knock coming up through the concrete harder than she has ever felt it. Somewhere under Tidefall, an old stone is waiting to find out who will stay.

Can Sam prove that Daniel Kelleher’s fall was no accident before the hold is lifted and the drill reaches the stone beneath the dam?

And when Tidefall goes quiet, the ring on Sam’s hand begins to pull west.

A paranormal cozy mystery with atmosphere thick as November frost, a ghost who keeps the record straight, a dog with standards, and a retired detective who knows the most dangerous men have very clean paperwork.

Murder at Tidefall continues The Moonhaven Mysteries. Each book solves its own case, while a larger mystery runs through the whole series, best enjoyed in order.

Book 1: Death at Moonhaven Light
Book 2: Murder at Moonhaven Light
Book 3: Secrets at Saltwick
Book 4: Murder at Stoneharbor
Book 5: Murder at Cairn Cove
Book 6: Murder at Tidefall
Book 7: Shadows at Greyfell
Book 8: Death at Harrow Point
Book 9: Murder in the Old Wood
Book 10: The Last Light at Moonhaven