Mark de Castrique. Poisoned Pen, $24.95 (258p) ISBN 978-1-4642-0308-4
The planned expansion of Heaven’s Gate Gardens, a cemetery outside Gainesboro, N.C., causes conflict in de Castrique’s engaging sixth mystery featuring funeral director and deputy sheriff Barry Clayton (after 2010’s Fatal Undertaking). The discovery
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Mark de Castrique. Poisoned Pen, $16.99 trade paper (320p) ISBN 978-1-72825-833-1
De Castrique follows up 2022’s Secret Lives with a bewitching political thriller centered on 75-year-old ex-FBI agent Ethel Fiona Crestwater. On the eve of a Supreme Court decision with major implications for the lithium mining industry—which is all
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Mark de Castrique. Poisoned Pen, $16.95 trade paper (288p) ISBN 978-1-7282-5830-0
This light and lively series launch from de Castrique (the Blackman Agency investigations) introduces 75-year-old Ethel Fiona Crestwater, a retired FBI agent who remains a legend among her former colleagues for her “myriad connections in both the...
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Mark de Castrique. Poisoned Pen, $15.99 trade paper (272p) ISBN 978-1-4642-1315-1
Decades-old environmental sins and their modern legacy drive de Castrique’s solid eighth mystery set in Asheville, N.C. (after 2019’s Murder in Rat Alley). During opening day at the local baseball stadium, PI Sam Blackman and Nakayla Robertson, his...
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Mark de Castrique. Poisoned Pen, $26.99 (272p) ISBN 978-1-4926-9938-5
At the start of de Castrique’s nicely plotted seventh Sam Blackman mystery (after 2017’s Hidden Scars), the skeletal remains of a body are found near Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute, once a NASA tracking station but now a weather research...
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Mark de Castrique. Poisoned Pen, $26.95 (274p) ISBN 978-1-4642-1037-2
Early in de Castrique’s fine seventh Buryin’ Barry mystery (after 2014’s Risky Undertaking), Barry Clayton, the director of the Clayton Funeral Home and part-time deputy sheriff in Gainesboro, N.C., meets with Janet Sinclair, who wants his help...
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Mark de Castrique. Poisoned Pen, $26.95 (254p) ISBN 978-1-4642-0896-6
In De Castrique’s superior sixth mystery featuring Asheville, N.C., PI Sam Blackman (after 2015’s A Specter of Justice), 80-year-old Violet Baker asks Sam to look into the suspicious death of her brother, Paul Weaver, a WWII vet who was a student at
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Mark de Castrique. Poisoned Pen, $26.95 (282p) ISBN 978-1-4642-0599-6
This suspenseful thriller from de Castrique (Double Cross of Time) doesn’t follow through on the big ideas behind its clever premise. Rusty Mullins, a former Secret Service agent, is on a private assignment protecting Chinese neuroscientist Lisa Li...
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Mark de Castrique. Poisoned Pen, $26.95 (252p) ISBN 978-1-4642-0474-6
In de Castrique’s lively fifth Sam Blackman mystery (after 2013’s A Murder in Passing), Sam helps organize a ghost tour of Asheville, N.C., to raise money for the two orphaned children of a client, Helen Atwood, after Helen’s abusive husband murders
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Mark De Castrique. Poisoned Pen, $24.95 (262p) ISBN 978-1-4642-0149-3
De Castrique's well-crafted fourth mystery (after 2011's The Sandburg Connection) featuring Ashville, N.C., PI Sam Blackman and partner/lover Nakayla Robertson explores America's past history of racial segregation. Sam, on a mushroom hunt with...
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Mark de Castrique. Poisoned Pen, $24.95 (306p) ISBN 978-1-59058-617-4
Secret Service agent turned bodyguard Russell “Rusty” Mullins smells a rat when Paul Luguire, the high-level Federal Reserve exec he’s been protecting, apparently commits suicide in this taut political thriller from de Castrique (The Sandburg...
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Mark de Castrique. Poisoned Pen, $24.95 (298p) ISBN 978-1-59058-941-0; $14.95 trade paper ISBN 978-1-59058-943-4
At the outset of de Castrique's stellar third mystery featuring Asheville, N.C., PI Sam Blackman (after 2010's The Fitzgerald Ruse), Sam and his partner, Nakayla Robertson, are following professor Janice Wainwright to determine if she's really...
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Mark de Castrique, Poisoned Pen, $24.95 (240p) ISBN 978-1-59058-801-7; $14.95 paper ISBN 978-1-59058-803-1
When the stabbed body of Jaycees president Carl Atkinson turns up in a coffin at the Jaycees' Halloween haunted house fund-raiser, Barry Clayton investigates in de Castrique's absorbing fifth mystery to feature the Gainesboro, N.C., undertaker and...
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Mark de Castrique, Author . Poisoned Pen $24.95 (246p) ISBN 978-1-59058-629-7
At the start of de Castrique’s winning second Sam Blackman mystery (after 2008’s Blackman’s Coffin
), the former U.S. military CID officer and his lover, Nakayla Robertson, are setting up a detective agency in Asheville, N.C. Their
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Mark de Castrique, Author . Poisoned Pen $24.95 (255p) ISBN 978-1-59058-517-7
At the start of this outstanding first in a new series from de Castrique (Final Undertaking
), Sam Blackman, a feisty army vet who lost part of a leg in the current Iraq War, is in his last days of rehab at a V.A. hospital in Asheville, N.C., when...
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Mark de Castrique, Author . Poisoned Pen $24.95 (255p) ISBN 978-1-59058-229-9
In this colorful, engrossing fourth adventure for funeral home owner and former cop Barry Clayton (after 2006's Foolish Undertaking
), an ordinary afternoon in Gainesboro, N.C., is interrupted when an elderly man visiting from Florida opens fire
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Mark de Castrique, Author . Poisoned Pen $24.95 (324p) ISBN 978-1-59058-116-2
The North Carolina mountain country in winter provides the atmospheric setting for de Castrique's second well-crafted mystery to feature undertaker-sleuth Barry Clayton (after 2003's Dangerous Outing
). While moving the old grave of Pearly...
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Mark de Castrique, Author, Mark Castrique, Author . Poisoned Pen $24.95 (254p) ISBN 978-1-59058-055-4
Ably following in the footsteps of Margaret Maron, TV and film producer de Castrique sets his first novel among the folk who populate Gainesboro, N.C., and the surrounding hill country. The book opens with a powerful bang: mentally unbalanced Dallas
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