Adventures of Mary Crow

Sent by the governor to investigate hate crimes in rural Campbell County, Mary Crow finds that hateful words have incited many crimes, and not just against the LGBTQ community. As Mary learns that a number of people have either disappeared or wound up dead, young Chase Buchanan comes forward with a tale about his sister, Samantha. She's gone missing, and Chase insists that his stepfather has sold the girl to get rid of her. The stepfather seems nice enough, though, and Mary chalks the story up to the boy's dislike of his newly blended family and an overactive imagination. Probing deeper, Mary and Detective Victor Galloway search the county crime statistics and find that the petty crime rate is strangely low, while the murdered and missing cases are spiking. Most puzzling is the fact that so many people die or simply vanish along Highway 74, a road the local Latinos call la carretera de delores. The road of sorrows. Mary tries as hard, but finds the dots hard to connect in a conservative mountain county suspicious of strangers. After a farewell dinner with Victor Galloway, she winds up her investigation unsatisfied, but hoping she can come up with a report that will mollify the governor. She's driving east, along Highway 74, when the road of sorrows suddenly lives up to its name. A wiggling shadow and a plaintive cry lure Mary into a web of unspeakable evil that stretches from the coves of Campbell County to faraway countries, where innocence is sold to the highest bidder.

Mary Crow is running for DA, trying to unseat the incumbent George Turpin. In mid-campaign a stray dog digs up shocking new evidence that breathes life into a decades-old murder of a nine-year-old girl. Pisgah County thinks the most likely suspect is Zack Collier, an autistic man who's also the son of one of Mary Crow's campaign volunteers. When the police start harassing Zack yet again, his mother begs Mary for help. Against the advice of her campaign manager, she agrees to represent the compromised man. Mary stops the police abuse, but she realizes that the true killer must be found if Zack and his mother are to ever be free of rumor and innuendo. She enlists the aid of retired detective Jack Wilkins, who's been obsessed with this murder since the day it happened. Eager to solve this final mystery of his life, he agrees to work for Mary. Mary and Jack join forces, along with SBI agent Victor Galloway. In the midst of her political campaign, Mary must save Zack and his mother when attacks against them grow from rumor into physical danger. Only when Mary discovers the true killer does her campaign rhetoric hit home-that all people are innocent until proven guilty.