The Blood Ballad
A Torie O'Shea Mystery
-
- $12.99
-
- $12.99
Publisher Description
Genealogist and mother of three Torie O'Shea is out birding on the cliffs of the Mississippi River as part of New Kassell, Missouri's first ever bird-watching Olympics, when someone starts shooting at her and her partner. Disoriented and running for their lives, they stumble over an antique trunk and discover a badly beaten dead body stuffed inside.
Soon after this disturbing event, musicologist Glen Morgan shows up at the Kendall House, Torie's new textile museum, claiming to be Torie's cousin and to have proof that Torie's grandfather secretly may have written a number of popular songs for the Morgan Family Players, who were famous country music singers. Being a genealogist and the head of the local historical society, Torie doesn't appreciate anyone shaking up a family tree that she has spent years putting together, but Glen's old recordings are more than she can resist. After a little digging in the library and some serious snooping into the shooting, Torie starts to uncover secrets about her family and the town that even she didn't know.
Rett MacPherson's intricate plots and delightful small-town characters with long family histories hit all of the right notes in The Blood Ballad, the newest installment in her terrific Torie O'Shea series.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In MacPherson's tepid 11th Torie O'Shea mystery (after 2007's Died in the Wool), the New Kassell, Mo., genealogist learns that her fiddler grandfather, John Robert Keith, was possibly related to the Morgan Family Players, a Depression-era country band famous in five states. Glen Morgan, the grandson of musician Scott Morgan, phones Torie to say he has a tape suggesting Torie's grandfather wrote some songs Scott Morgan took credit for. Meanwhile, during a birding expedition, Torie witnesses the dumping of a corpse, who turns out to be another Morgan grandson, Clifton Weaver. Soon after, Torie receives an eerie CD, evidently mailed by Weaver before his death. On the CD is a "blood ballad," in effect the murder confession of Belle Morgan, a member of the clan who disappeared years earlier, sung by an unidentified female. When the song leads to the discovery of Belle's long-lost body, Torie gets on the case. Her slogging through genealogical clues doesn't have a lot of drama, but her warm spirit is sure to appeal to cozy fans.
