THE DEVIL'S BONES (02/12)

Here's the cover for my modern-day, standalone mystery, The Devil's Bones (Cengage/Five Star), that will be released 02/12.

From inside the cover:

When a late-summer drought hangs over the Midwest for far longer than it’s welcome, and drains a pond outside of Dukaine, Indiana, old secrets quickly come to the surface.  A small skeleton appears in the mud, and everyone in town is convinced the bones belong to Tito Cordova, an eight year old boy, who disappeared nineteen years earlier. 

Dukaine, Indiana is the home to the SunRipe plant, a tomato processing plant, that has always relied on migrant workers to work the fields surrounding the town.  Tito’s mother, Esperanza, was a year round resident.  Both mother and son were just a bad memory, and Tito’s disappearance was thought to be best forgotten, by most of the town’s residents.

When the marshal of Dukaine is shot at the pond, lured there by a note, and a medallion that belonged to Esperanza, the investigation falls to deputy Jordan McManus.

Racing against time, and under the threat of his own arrest as a suspect in the shooting, Jordan must dig deep into the past, and face and the possibility that Tito Cordova might still be alive. 

Has Tito Cordova come back to Dukaine for a bloody dose of revenge?  Or is there another killer on the loose, using the past as a cover for crimes in the present?  After another murder occurs, Jordan McManus finds himself squarely in the crosshairs of the law, and a cold-blooded killer. 

Even if Jordan survives, nothing in Dukaine will ever be the same.