Sam Blackman

Sam Blackman is an angry man. A Chief Warrant Officer in the Criminal Investigation Detachment of the U.S. military, he lost a leg in Iraq, and has been outspoken in his criticism of his medical treatment. Then, ex-marine and fellow amputee Tikima Robertson walks into his hospital room and hints that she has an opportunity for Sam to use his investigative skills—if he can stop feeling sorry for himself. But before she can return, Tikima is murdered, her body found floating in the river. A journal found in Tikima's apartment, dated to 1919 and written by a twelve-year-old boy, reveals a ninety-year-old crime that foreshadows Tikima's death—the murder of her great-great-grandfather, Elijah, whose body was also found in the French Broad River. Sam must delve into Asheville's rich history to uncover the murderous truth.

Former chief warrant officer and amputee Sam Blackman and his partner, Nakayla Robertson, are opening a detective agency. They have high hopes that the thriving Mountain Region  will provide a steady stream of cases. Their first client, a quirky elderly woman in a retirement community, makes a strange request: she wants Sam to right a wrong she committed over seventy years ago. Her victim? F. Scott Fitzgerald. Her crime? Stealing a manuscript when Fitzgerald resided in the stately Grove Park Inn. Sam's task seems simple enough: retrieve the woman's lockbox and deliver the manuscript to Fitzgerald's heirs.

It was only a simple, routine assignment for private investigator Sam Blackman and his partner, Nakayla Robertson: follow a history professor, who is suing a spinal surgeon for malpractice, and catch her in physical activities that undercut her claim. When the professor, Janice Wainwright, visits Connemara, the home of the poet Carl Sandburg, in Flat Rock, North Carolina, and climbs the arduous trail to the top of Glassy Mountain, Sam believes he has the evidence he needs to wrap up the case—until he finds the woman semiconscious and bleeding on the mountain's granite outcrop. Her final words were “It's the Sandburg verses. The Sandburg verses.” As the first person to discover the dying woman, Sam becomes the prime suspect. Now the case is personal. An autopsy reveals painkillers in her blood and solid proof of the surgeon's errors, and Sam is left with haunting questions: Why did this suffering woman endure the climb to the mountaintop? Did she stumble and fall or did someone cause her death? Then a break-in at the Wainwright farmhouse and the theft of Sandburg volumes convince Sam that someone is seeking information worth killing for. But what did Pulitzer Prize winner Sandburg have in his literary collection that could lead to multiple murders? And who will be targeted next? Sam and Nakayla must navigate a convoluted trail of historical facts and mountain legends to arrive at the truth—a truth that Carl Sandburg never knew he possessed—and a treasure to be had for a song.

In Asheville, North Carolina, the Blackman & Robertson Detective Agency faces a disturbing reality: no clients. Sam Blackman finds inactivity intolerable, so when partner Nakayla Robertson suggests a mushroom hunt on the site of a historic freed-slave commune called the Kingdom of the Happy Land, Sam reluctantly agrees. When he stumbles across a skeleton, his adventure mushrooms into a case of murder. But it isn't his case-he has no client-and the local authorities tell him to butt out. Then Marsha Montgomery comes to the office asking Sam and Nakayla to investigate a burglary at her mother's home. In 1967 someone stole a rifle and a photograph of Marsha's mother, grandmother, and great grandmother taken in 1932 by renowned photographer Doris Ulmann. Marsha's visit is no coincidence: the photograph was taken at the Kingdom of the Happy Land. Sam's being played, but why? When Marsha's eighty-five-year-old mother Lucille is arrested for murder, Sam has his answer and his case. Is the skeleton that of Jimmy Lang-Lucille's lover and Marsha's white father-who disappeared in 1967? Jimmy's brother says no; Jimmy left to seek his fortune after Lucille rejected his marriage proposal. But others stood to gain from Jimmy's disappearance. A veil of betrayal and deceit hides a killer desperate to protect a dark secret, and no one-not even Sam-is safe from the deadly consequences.

When private detective Sam Blackman agrees to help his partner and lover, Nakayla Robertson, conduct a fundraiser for orphaned twins, he does so to ease his conscience. The boys' parents were killed in a courtroom shootout where Sam was the key witness against the twins' father. The charity event, a nighttime ghost tour of the legendary haunted sites of Asheville, North Carolina, seems harmless enough. Sam only has to tell the story of a grief-stricken woman who hanged herself from an old, arched stone bridge. "Helen, come forth," he cries. Sam and his tourgoers expect the actress playing Helen's ghost to walk toward them from the bridge's dark recesses. Instead, her body tumbles from overhead and dangles at the end of a noose. Someone has reenacted the legend with deadly authenticity. When a second murder mimics another old ghost tale, the police fear a macabre serial killer is on the prowl. But the case isn't Sam's to solve. Then, a tidal wave of evidence begins to point to one man-Sam's friend, defense attorney Hewitt Donaldson. Sam and Nakayla, firmly believing in Donaldson's innocence, must not only prove it but halt a murderer seemingly bent on retribution. Does the killer's motivation rise from the present, or is Team Donaldson dealing with some specter from the past?