A Trace of Blood in Duxbury

His best friend is in a cell. The evidence says he did it. The evidence is lying.

When Dave gets arrested for the murder of Molly Fitzgerald, he calls the only person he trusts: Elijah Trace, South Boston private eye. Dave's got a problem bigger than the charge - he'd been sleeping with the victim for six months, and the one man who can never know is the father figure who gave him his career.

Elijah starts pulling the thread in Duxbury, and it doesn't lead where the cops think. It leads to a dying defense firm, a shell company in Delaware, and a family that protects its own - at any cost.

The deeper he digs, the clearer it gets: Dave wasn't a suspect who got unlucky. Dave was the plan.

Elijah Trace has his own reasons for refusing to quit. He knows what it costs when giving up wins - and he decided a long time ago which side of that fight he's on.

A Trace of Blood in Duxbury is the first book in The Trace Files, a hard-boiled detective series starring Elijah Trace - Woodford Reserve neat, an office above the Red Clover in Southie, and a rule about not walking away.

For fans of Robert B. Parker, Michael Connelly, and old-school first-person PI fiction.

The paperback edition includes two maps of the story's ground - eastern Massachusetts and Boston & the South Shore - and a full glossary of places, roads, and Boston slang.

by Collin Sampson