Perdition house - kathryn r. wall

From Charleston to Hilton Head, Family matters .

and murder is relative.

When a fifth cousin twice removed calls Bay Tanner--a young, recently widowed financial consultant--from the Beaufort County Jail, its no accident.

Mercer Mary Prescott spent a lot of time and trouble locating Bay on the family tree, and she needs more than bail out of the relationship.

What shes really after is a secret Bays not willing to reveal--yet.

But when Bay generously takes Mercer back to the family mansion of Presquisle, she finds that this distant kin comes with a lot of personal baggage--and some very dangerous pursuers.

Before Bay can help straighten out Mercers problems, the mousy young woman disappears.

Bay begins a desperate hunt for her shirttail cousin through the twisted alleys of the past, from Civil War days to a plantation called Perdition House, and to one last deadly fight.

Sue Grafton, Sara Paretsky, and Marcia Muller come to mind as the quintessential writers of the modern female private eye novel.

Wall, in a quiet and unassuming way, has produced a body of work of equal quality.

Highly recommended.

-- Library Journal on The Mercy Oak Third book in the Bay Tanner mystery series.