A Matter of Manners (The Hawkins Family Mysteries, Book 1)
“You did not find a body.”
But Harry did, in an abandoned car at the back of his new field. When the responding officers put up their crime scene tape, Harry is tossed off the land, denied access to his farm equipment and prevented from working, while the police plod along with their investigations. Harry decides there is nothing to be done except find those responsible for his troubles and teach them some country manners. His only clue leads him to the big city, where his daughter, Liz, attends university, and soon he has drawn her away from her studies and into his shenanigans. It doesn’t take long before they realize murderers don’t worry about politeness.
A Muddle of Motives (The Hawkins Family Mysteries, Book 2)
Liz returns to the family farm, done with her summer internship and ready to take it easy and focus on her horse, Comet, during the last lazy week before her final year of college. But her dad, Harry, while visiting a neighbor at the back of a dead-end road, stumbles across a corpse, another murder. The victim was a hated local, and there is no shortage of suspects. Harry and Liz are pulled onto the case when the police arrest Harry’s hired hand, ignoring the troubled teenager’s iron-clad alibi. To Liz’s dismay, the pair are soon investigating most of their own friends and neighbors. It seems everyone had a motive, and why were so many of them on that lonely, dead-end road at just the wrong time? With the police convinced that they “have their man”, it’s up to Harry and Liz to weave their way through the means and motives, and track down the true culprit.
