Hazard and Somerset: A Union of Swords

Three months have passed since Emery Hazard and John-Henry Somerset faced a madman and lived to tell about it.Three months have passed since Emery Hazard resigned from his job as a detective.Three months can be too long and too short, all at the same time.On Halloween, a professor at the local college is murdered in his apartment, in front of dozens of witnesses. Then the killer disappears. Somers is assigned the case-and a new partner.While Somers investigates the murder, Hazard struggles to find purpose in his new freedom. Despite his decision to stay away, he finds himself drawn to the case. But he's no longer police, and in the small town of Wahredua, not all of his former colleagues are happy to see him investigating another crime.When the sheriff's son and husband go missing, though, the case becomes more complicated than either Hazard or Somers had expected. And soon they learn that someone else is manipulating events in Wahredua.Someone who is very interested in Emery Hazard. The Rational Faculty is the first book in a follow-up series; read Hazard and Somerset's first adventures in The Hazard and Somerset Mysteries, beginning with Pretty Pretty Boys. A continuation of the Hazard and Somerset Mysteries.

Emery Hazard is trying to plan his wedding, even though his fiancé, John-Henry Somerset, isn't exactly making things easy for him. To be fair, Somers has been distracted lately; his father is running for mayor in a hotly contested election, and their hometown is splintering under the weight of divisive politics.In a matter of hours, those poisonous politics invade Hazard's life in a way he couldn't have imagined. Glenn Somerset, Somers's father, shows up on their doorstep, and he wants two things: first, for Hazard to neutralize a blackmail threat; and second, for Somers temporarily to move out of the house he shares with Hazard, part of public relations stunt to win the election. To Hazard's shock, Somers agrees.Determined to lose himself in his work, Hazard takes on a missing person's case, but his investigation only leads him deeper into the tangled web of small-town politics. To find the truth, he must face off with the viciously rich who rule Wahredua-and with the poor, desperate, and marginalized, who fight just as viciously in their own way.When Hazard's investigation uncovers a murder, he is forced to work with Somers to bring the killer to justice, despite their fractured relationship. But the sudden news that Hazard's father is failing fast threatens to put an untimely end to the case-and, in doing so, jeopardize Somers's last-ditch effort to repair his relationship with his own father.The killer, though, has an accelerating timeline, and in a world of wayward children, every relationship is fraught with hidden dangers. A continuation of the Hazard and Somerset Mysteries.