Circles of Death

by Marcia Talley

Overview

Hannah Ives uncovers a deadly connection between disturbing discoveries in the past and present in this gripping mystery.

Hannah Ives and her husband are staying at their idyllic vacation cottage on Maryland’s eastern shore when a young friend, Noel Sinclair, stops by for a visit. As Hannah shows Noel around the property, they notice some bald eagles in a neighboring cornfield who look seriously ill.

Could these magnificent birds have been poisoned? Hannah’s investigation soon clashes with powerful commercial agricultural interests. Meanwhile, Noel uncovers some shocking news of her own when she and her sister receive the results of their DNA tests. As Hannah tries to discover who is tormenting the birds while also delving into Noel’s family tree, the last thing she expects to uncover is a deadly connection between the two . . .

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781448307975
Publisher:	Severn House
Publication date:	03/05/2024
Series:	A Hannah Ives Mystery , #20
Edition description:	Main
Pages:	192
Sales rank:	587,395
Product dimensions:	5.79(w) x 8.74(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Marcia Talley is the Agatha and Anthony award-winning author of nineteen previous crime novels featuring sleuth Hannah Ives. Her short stories appear in more than a dozen collections and have been reprinted in many best-of-the-year crime story anthologies. She is a past president of Sisters in Crime, Inc. Marcia lives in Annapolis, Maryland, but spends the winter months in a quaint Loyalist cottage in the Bahamas.

Editorial Reviews

Fast paced and character focused . . . sure to please

Booklist on Tangled Roots

Entertaining . . . its solution is both surprising and memorable

Booklist on Mile High Murder

2023-12-06
After genetic testing suggests that a young woman’s family may not be who they say they are, her investigation into the past is interrupted by a local wildlife emergency.

Twenty-seven years ago, a young mother on the Eastern Shore of Maryland chose to place her infant on a minister’s doorstep rather than let the baby be sold by her cruel partner to “a loathsome couple from Baltimore.” After leaving the baby with only a note reading “My name is Noel,” the girl vanished into the night. In the present day, Noel Sinclair runs into Hannah Ives, whose grandchildren she used to babysit. Hannah says she’s been busy “building family trees from DNA data that’s been uploaded to recreational databases like Ancestry, 23andMe and GenTree” to help the police solve crimes. Noel soon shares the results of a recent DNA test she and her sister both took, which suggest that they aren’t even remotely related. Given her knack for diligent investigation, Hannah wants to help Noel figure out what’s going on, so she dives into the rabbit hole that is genealogical research. The two women also spend time catching up with each other at Our Song, the vacation cottage Hannah recently bought with her husband. As Hannah shows Noel some bald eagles there, the women spot a set of birds that seem to have gotten sick from eating a dead fox. But when they bring the birds to Hoots, the local bird rescue, it begins to look like someone deliberately poisoned the fox with carbofuran and that the birds may have died as a result. Now that Hannah and Noel are focusing on the question of who might want to poison local wildlife, Hannah leads the investigative charge with her meticulous research and ability to fly under the radar, hoping, like Noel, to find a happy resolution before more animals become victims.

Two mysteries plotted with an eye for the details of both subjects set this series apart.

Kirkus Reviews