Dead Air at Bitter Lake
(2027)(The second book in the Jack and Cocoa Mysteries series)
A novel by Mac Worden
Calvin Mercer promised to name a thief on the air. Somebody made sure he never got the chance.
Chicago homicide detective Jack Church is headed back to Herring with a Jeep full of ‘temporary’ belongings and a chocolate Goldendoodle snoring on the console. He has not moved home. He’d like that noted. Forty miles out, KBLI crackles in just in time for the town’s favorite loudmouth to hint that money entrusted to one of Bitter Lake’s most respected organizations has grown legs—and that tomorrow he’ll say who.
Then a door slams in the studio. A voice Calvin recognizes. A gunshot.
Dead air.
Jack turns toward Bitter Lake instead of home and the county sheriff has him back on the payroll before the body is cold. He isn’t the only outsider at the scene. Beck Holloway, the true-crime podcaster who blew past him on the highway, came to town to pick apart an old case and just inherited a new one. She has sources Jack can’t reach. He has a badge she can’t borrow. Neither is thrilled about needing the other.
The money trail runs through a pancake breakfast, a Legion ledger, a bank trust officer who won’t talk and a town official who talks a little too readily. The books are clean. Someone still died over them. And Cocoa—Coke for short—keeps finding things in the snow that nobody meant to leave behind.
With old friends, a mother who has already decided he’s staying, a niece who has decided he’s available and one Goldendoodle with a nose for evidence, Dead Air at Bitter Lake is a cozy mystery with a little edge and plenty of heart—the second Jack and Cocoa Mystery.
Genre: Mystery
Chicago homicide detective Jack Church is headed back to Herring with a Jeep full of ‘temporary’ belongings and a chocolate Goldendoodle snoring on the console. He has not moved home. He’d like that noted. Forty miles out, KBLI crackles in just in time for the town’s favorite loudmouth to hint that money entrusted to one of Bitter Lake’s most respected organizations has grown legs—and that tomorrow he’ll say who.
Then a door slams in the studio. A voice Calvin recognizes. A gunshot.
Dead air.
Jack turns toward Bitter Lake instead of home and the county sheriff has him back on the payroll before the body is cold. He isn’t the only outsider at the scene. Beck Holloway, the true-crime podcaster who blew past him on the highway, came to town to pick apart an old case and just inherited a new one. She has sources Jack can’t reach. He has a badge she can’t borrow. Neither is thrilled about needing the other.
The money trail runs through a pancake breakfast, a Legion ledger, a bank trust officer who won’t talk and a town official who talks a little too readily. The books are clean. Someone still died over them. And Cocoa—Coke for short—keeps finding things in the snow that nobody meant to leave behind.
With old friends, a mother who has already decided he’s staying, a niece who has decided he’s available and one Goldendoodle with a nose for evidence, Dead Air at Bitter Lake is a cozy mystery with a little edge and plenty of heart—the second Jack and Cocoa Mystery.
Genre: Mystery