Buryin' Barry Mystery

When Barry Clayton's father developed Alzheimer's disease, Barry gave up his career in law enforcement to run the family's funeral home in the North Carolina mountain town of Gainesboro, where he is known as Buryin' Barry. But even a small town in the Appalachians is not immune to crime. At a summer street dance, Barry's friend Sheriff Tommy Lee Wadkins is shot at by an old man distraught over the death of his wife. The hospitalized Tommy Lee appoints Barry as the deputy in charge of the investigation, to the dismay of Deputy Reece Hutchins. Who was the old man stalking? Why was a young woman, who was also wounded at the scene, traveling with the intended victim? What at first appears to be a case of a mentally unstable summer tourist develops into a case in which someone is preying on senior citizens. Barry discovers a tangled web of deceit stretching from western North Carolina to the Florida coast. Barry realizes that Deputy Hutchins is undercutting his investigation. And as potential witnesses and informants begin to die under mysterious circumstances, Barry confronts a conspiracy that runs so deep that he no longer knows whom to trust. One false step, one betrayal, would make this case Buryin' Barry's final undertaking.

You want to borrow a casket? Funeral director and part-time sheriff Barry Clayton finds United States Junior Chamber member Archie Donovan's request absurd until he learns the casket will be the centerpiece of the Jaycees' haunted house, a charity event with all proceeds going to the children's hospital. But when the president of the Jaycees is murdered in the casket on Halloween, the national press descends upon Gainesboro to cover the bizarre crime. Sheriff Tommy Lee Wadkins assigns Barry to be the lead investigator of a case that presents no motive and no suspects. Then someone fires a shot at Archie Donovan, and Barry wonders whether the victim in the casket had even been the intended target. Barry finds his police work and personal life on a collision course as his ex-wife Rachel comes to town with high hopes of using the story to launch her TV-network career. She begins prying into the lives of Gainesboro's most distinguished citizens and creates a backlash that leaves another body in its wake. Old wounds are ripped open, family rifts exposed, and a criminal enterprise revealed that cuts to the heart of the community. Barry Clayton must follow a trail of clues as winding as a forest path. The unexpected destination: a mountainside of Christmas trees. Somewhere behind these symbols of peace and goodwill lurks a killer. Unmasking him will be a fatal undertaking. A Poisoned Pen Press Mystery

When Cherokee burial remains are unearthed on the site of a local cemetery's expansion, Barry Clayton, part-time deputy and full-time undertaker, finds his dual occupations colliding. Then, during the interment of the wife of one of Gainesboro's most prominent citizens, Cherokee activist Jimmy Panther leads a protest. Words and fists fly.When Panther turns up executed on the grave of the deceased woman, Barry is forced to confront her family as the chief suspects. But the case lurches in a new direction with the arrival of Sheriff Tommy Lee Wadkin's army pal, Boston detective Kevin Malone. Malone is on the trail of a Boston hit man who arrived at the Cherokee reservation only days before the murder. Malone is convinced his quarry is the man who pulled the trigger. But who paid him? And why?The investigation draws Barry onto the reservation where Jimmy Panther's efforts to preserve Cherokee traditions threatened the development of a new casino, a casino bringing millions of dollars of construction and substantial yearly payouts to every member of the tribe. With the unlikely team of his childhood nemesis Archie Donovan and his elderly Uncle Wayne, Barry goes undercover in an effort to draw out the truth. But the stakes are higher than he realized-and the life of a Cherokee boy becomes the wager. Barry must play his cards very carefully in his riskiest undertaking yet.