Cold Blood: A John Jordan Mystery

An unusual concept lifts Lister’s solid 13th novel starring Florida prison chaplain and sheriff’s investigator John Jordan (after Blood Work). On the day of George W. Bush’s second inauguration in 2005, 21-year-old liberal political activist Randa Raffield is someplace she isn’t supposed to be: Florida’s Gulf coast. After she crashes her car while on the phone with her mother, she refuses help from a passing trucker. By the time the police arrive on the scene, only minutes after the trucker called them, Randa has vanished. Almost 12 years later, the still-unresolved case becomes the focus of a podcast, In Search of Randa Raffield, which leads John’s boss, the Gulf County sheriff, to reopen the case and assign him to it. Lister cleverly uses excerpts from the podcast to lay out theories of the case and describe the people in Randa’s life as John works toward the shocking, but logical, truth. Agent: Amy Moore-Benson, AMB Literary Management. (Nov.)