The Penalty for Prying
Harry Lancaster is learning that nothing shakes up life like a dead body. Once a world-traveling anthropologist, sixty-seven-year-old Harry now struggles with a fractured hip and the void created by retirement and his wife’s passing. His new, energetic millennial caregiver, Emma Stockton, is privately fighting demons of her own, with growing doubts about her recent career change and imminent wedding to a possibly too-perfect groom.
After finding Harry’s icy and mysterious neighbor Paula Daniels poisoned, Harry and Emma are swept into the sinister undercurrents of Harry’s condo community, the chicest locale in a small mid-western university town.
Motive and suspects abound. There’s the dapper politician who can charm the habit off a nun. The flirtatious shopkeeper who may have offed her first husband to make room for the second. The gruff CEO who pairs trucker lingo with fine wines. The reserved artist who blends into the background. And the righteous do-gooder who diligently doles out gossip and casseroles.
As the clues mount, so do the risks Harry and Emma are willing to take: chasing cars, breaking and entering, even staring down the barrel of a gun. When another neighbor is fatally shot, Harry realizes he and Emma may be in grave danger. But that won’t stop this unlikely duo.
