Carolyn Neville decides that her old friend Marvin should update his true-crime bestseller Darkness at Dawn for its 50th anniversary. Her skeptical boss agrees-on the condition that she'll quit if it doesn't sell.




Marvin goes to the mountain town of Motherlode, Colorado to gather new information about the unsolved murder of a beloved schoolteacher. When an attack by an unknown assailant puts Marvin in a coma, Carolyn and her sidekick Stephen Ames take up where he left off.




Carolyn makes friends with the murder victim's sister, but tangles with a hostile local historian, a creepy motel manager and a lecherous mine owner. The investigation takes them to the bottom of a mine shaft and strands them in a blizzard as a killer with a gas can tries to send them out in a blaze of glory.




All Carolyn wants is to see her friend honored, his life celebrated, her boss humbled and a killer found.




For fans of Horace Rumpole, Monk and Stephanie Plum, the Carolyn Neville Mysteries are full of laugh-out-loud suspense.