Secrets at Saltwick

About this book

A librarian at the foot of the bluffs. A cave that sings beneath the cliffs. And a working lantern beside the body.

Spring comes late to Saltwick, Maine, a harbor town two hours up the coast from Moonhaven. Retired homicide detective Sam Blackwood has been hearing about its singing cave all winter. She arrives in March to find the town's librarian, Arthur Pendleton, dead at the foot of the cliffs. The police chief has already called it an accident and closed the file.

Sam isn't so sure. Arthur walked those bluffs in the dark for forty-eight years. The notebook in his pocket reads like a warning: three months, maybe less. A scrap of dark green fabric is snagged on a thorn at waist height. And a polite man from the Coastal Historical Foundation has taken a sudden interest in Arthur's library.

Behind a shelf of atlases, Arthur left seven brass bells and a protocol in chalk for whoever came next. Out on the water, a platform nobody can see is counting down to a single night. And Ezra, the ghost who has kept Moonhaven's light since 1923, can reach Sam only through the ring on her hand.

She still has Moss, the Border Collie whose tail tells her who not to trust. She has Dr. Rowan Ashby and his scanner, an innkeeper who serves tea without comment, and Dora Finch, eighty years old, who opened her door before Sam knocked. The lowest tide of the year is the only way down. To finish what Arthur started, Sam will have to go into the dark herself.

And Saltwick is only one name on a list of nine towns. Somewhere in granite country, another keeper of the watch has stopped answering.

Secrets at Saltwick is Book 3 of The Moonhaven Mysteries. Each book is a complete, satisfying mystery, and the series is best enjoyed in order.

Go down with Sam at the lowest tide of the year and hear what the cave is singing.

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