Aftershock

After a life in various war zones, Dell and Dolly have settled in this town, fulfilling Dolly's lifelong dream. Though she has given up her nursing career and moved smoothly into civilian life, Dell had been a mercenary, so they both have to sacrifice their prior identities. When the star of the girls' softball team shoots and kills the most popular boy in school, Dolly asks Dell to uncover the motive behind this inexplicable crime. It doesn't take him long to uncover a horrifying rite of passage. The pitcher's guilt is not in doubt, yet she deserves a trial, so Dell and Dolly must put together a defense. What they discover culminates in a decision to put the town itself on trial.

A body washes up on a beach. The dead man's skull has been bashed open, and his upper body is covered in neo-Nazi tattoos. The cops pick up Homer, a schizophrenic, and even though Homer could never have inflicted such damage on a man twice his weight and half his age, he is arrested. Dolly is outraged, but with connections like Dell, she is anything but helpless. The search for the real killer pulls them into the world of hate groups; then they make a shocking discovery.

Undercurrents rise to the surface as Dell employs his mercenary soldier skills to follow the trail of a man who unwisely threatened his beloved wife, Dolly. This is a man with the deadly patience of a gila monster, and a complex agenda, possibly the first partner in literature who tries to pass as a gay man, as a light-skinned person of color would have passed for white decades ago. This new threat endangers Dell and Dolly's 'found family' MaryLou, the woman they helped clear of murder charges, her close friend Franklin, and Mack, Dolly's social worker-friend, whom Dell permitted to help with his investigation into neo-Nazi groups, and who has just gotten married.