Terri Lynn the girl from poverty row and Carter Henry, the handsome scion of the richest family in the county were high school lovers. He left for college and a series of failed careers while she married Cal Cawley, the good-ole-boy who knocked her up and used her for a punching bag until the night she emptied a .38 in his chest.
Now, five years later, Terri is out of prison, attempting to overcome the stigma of being a murderess, care for her dying mother and raise a child in a small town that understands her act but shrinks from its brutality.
Carter too has returned, fleeing failure, to the home of a father he hates and who in turn, despises him. In his bitter state he has hatched a plot to fake the kidnapping of his drug addicted sister Leni, in order to extort money from their dying father.
Terri and Carter meet in a local bar. Desperate for money, unable to find work and emotionally flayed by her prison experience, Terri is easy prey for her former lover who involves her first in a passionate affair and then in the plot.
An out-of-control Leni can’t keep it together long enough to do her part and although the money is paid, the scam begins to unravel.
A handsome Deputy Sheriff has seemingly become interested in Terri and at the point of her deepest involvement in the kidnapping, he informs her that he has convinced the Sheriff she is deserving of a second chance, a clerical job at the Police Station.
To avoid suspicion she takes the job.
Leni is found dead, forcing Terri and Carter to dispose of her body. Its subsequent discovery changes the Sheriff’s already active suspicions into a full-scale investigation.
As she starts her new job Terri finds herself in the unique and terrifying position of watching the noose as it tightens, inexorably, around her own neck.
Other conspirators come to light and hidden character relationships are revealed. The pressure of the investigation leads to a series of surprise twists, as the plot thunders toward a violent resolution against the background of a raging waterfall.
Take one hard case problem solver with a giant sidekick; one billionaire industrialist with a seemingly simple problem, add women, politics and greed, shake vigorously and watch it turn into a dictionary of corruption and multiple murder.
Digger Charleston solves problems. That’s why billionaire industrialist Emory Taggert has his number on a speed dial. So when Digger returns to the city from a particularly ugly assignment in New Orleans, it’s not surprising that his richest client is in need of his services. It’s a puzzling problem in that there seems to be no specific point to the investigation. A scandal rag columnist has been killed in the course of a mugging. Taggert feels there might be some connection between the woman and one of his wealthy friends, all of whom are backing Christian Fundamentalist, Brent Knowlton’s presidential campaign and would be embarrassed by any association with her or her magazine.
Digger finds that a number of the woman’s associates have also been the victims of fatal violence. The investigation leads, not to any of Taggert’s friends but to the gruesome death of a rock groupie that was either written about or photographed by each of the dead scandal workers.
Meanwhile, background checking by the bizarre hermit/super hacker, Grendel and his troll-like sidekick Hiram Lipsky uncovers an intriguing, covert relationship between the Taggert sponsored Message Holders, a group of Christian Fundamentalists and Famous Flesh Magazine, flagship of a sprawling porno empire, against whom The Message Holders are supposed to have been waging a moral crusade. Also surfacing are some very unsavory relationships between Taggert and a number of dysfunctional women including, it appears, his own daughter and stepdaughter.
The investigation is stepping on toes. How hard, becomes apparent when Digger and his pre-school daughter are attacked in Riverside Park and again when Vivian, his secretary is brutally beaten in their office.
The death toll in the scandal mag community has passed the point where any thought that they are unrelated incidents would appear ludicrous. This is confirmed when Digger and Drazen discover that the brother and father of the accidentally killed groupie have been executing a carefully planned program of retribution for the sensational coverage that they believe dishonored the girls death. The brother is killed as they are trying to apprehend him and the seemingly crippled father is left with his failure and grief.
In the process of solving the scandal worker’s deaths, Digger has exposed the fetid swamp of Emory Taggert’s political and sexual relationships and in so doing has, himself, become a target. Digger’s solution is influenced by the return of the groupie’s crippled father, by a lovely scandal writer he has rescued from the fate of her friends and finally by the daughter of the presidential candidate on whose behalf Taggert approached Digger in the first place.
When a clan of artists, agents, gallery owners and models gather to celebrate their matriarch’s birthday the possibilities are endless. Love affairs, lusty engagements and family conflict over the state of art are the order of the day.
For figural artist Nick Casura it is truly the best and worst of times. His latest show, “Tribecca Nudes” is a critical smash and an opening night sellout. The women in town are divided into equal camps; wanting his body, his work or his child. Everything’s coming up roses—complete with thorns.
The bad news is that he has a terminal case of “how do I top this.” Everything he’s painting looks to him like the inside wall of a Port-a-San. To add to his problems, his family is having a reunion for his mother’s fiftieth birthday, which wouldn’t be too terrible—if it weren’t at his father’s country studio.
Nick’s father is Victor Casura, icon of the American School of Abstract Expressionism, a universally acclaimed modern master and a vitriolic critic of anything even vaguely resembling figural painting.
It’s a battle they’ve conducted since Nick’s childhood, one that he does not look forward to repeating because he instinctively knows it will never end.
Nick will go, of course, accompanied by his sister Kate, a brilliant photographer whose light has been seriously obscured by the glittering careers of the men in the family.