Massacre Island: A Novel - Softcover

Hegwood, Martin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312983158 ISBN 13: 9780312983154

Publisher: Minotaur Books, 2002

Synopsis

Dauphin Island, AL: Three college students arrive at Jason Summers' beach house for the last big party of the season. Nausea strikes hard before the first shot of Tequila is ever poured: blood, everywhere. They have found the bodies.

Reporters and politicos scramble for position. Three of the victims belong to the Beautiful People: a smooth entrepreneur, a Beauty Queen, a News Anchor. The fourth, Rebecca Jordan, is forgotten in the frenzy that surrounds the killings.

Rebecca's mother, disgusted by the desecration of her daughter's memory, seeks help from Private Investigator Jack Delmas. He reluctantly accepts, and soon finds that appearances are not what they seem in this quaint community.

Beneath its surface lies a netherworld peopled by debauched jet-setters, international smugglers, and cunning, unpredictable murderers. It is a world where innocence can be swallowed whole, and where the best intentions of people like Rebecca Jordan can distort into grisly bloodbaths like the one that consumed her.

To win justice for Rebecca, Delmas allies with Jimbo McInnis, an oversized, fast-living, Hemingway-quoting deputy sheriff. Together, they must delve behind the madness to find the truth.

Doing so may cost them more than their reputations.

About this title

About the Author

MARTIN HEGWOOD is a former assistant district attorney and is currently the senior attorney for the Mississippi secretary of state's office. St. Martin's Press published his first novel, Big Easy Backroad, in 1999, and his second, The Green-Eyed Hurricane, in 2000. The latter won the Mississippi Library Association's Award for Best Fiction.

From Publishers Weekly

In his third Jack Delmas novel (after 2000's Green-Eyed Hurricane), Hegwood paints such an attractive picture of Dauphin Island, which lies off the coast of Alabama, one feels like packing one's bags and heading south. Jack comes to the island, very reluctantly, to investigate the murder of a young woman, Rebecca Jordan, one of four victims shot execution-style in the home of Rebecca's boyfriend, Jason Summers. The media have sensationalized the story, portraying the deaths as drug-related and Rebecca as a tramp. Her mother wants Jack to vindicate her name. Everyone's prime choice of the real target of the murders is Jason, a hotshot entrepreneur who made regular trips to Mexico in search of "clients" for his business. The authorities are convinced he was smuggling drugs, despite the lack of evidence. In truth, there's no evidence to suggest any motive for such a drastic crime. Jack's presence on the island is met with a similar, inexplicable hostility. Someone plants a letter bomb on his doorstep. Someone else threatens his daughter, with whom he has a refreshingly realistic relationship. Not easily intimidated, Jack puts his case together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, with infinite patience and ably aided by Deputy Jimbo McInnes, who wants to be a private eye. Not least of this book's charms is that the ultimate solution concerns wheelbarrows. The absence of pointless violence also helps make this a pleasant read. Author tour.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Minotaur Books
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0312983158
• ISBN 13: 9780312983154
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 274