Cotton

Heald’s ambitious second entry in his Clarkeston Chronicles (after 2014’s Death in Eden) pits a varied group of amateur sleuths looking into the five-year-old disappearances of college student Diana Cavendish and her boyfriend, Jacob Granville, from Clarkeston, Ga., against well-hidden and powerful adversaries. Newspaper reporter James Murphy, who covered the original story, finds recently posted photos of Cavendish on a soft-core website, which he reports to Atlanta first assistant U.S. attorney Melanie Wilkerson. Wilkerson calls in L.A. sociology professor Stanley Hopkins, the hero of Death in Eden, for help in tracing the website owners. Pushback soon follows. Wilkerson gets a warning not to investigate, and Murphy’s house is trashed and his laptop stolen. Gradually, the trio piece together a complex story that begins with Granville’s trip to Geneva, Switzerland, years earlier and involves the World Trade Organization and powerful U.S. cotton interests. The action builds to an ingeniously satisfying resolution. [em](July) [/em]