Game of Bones (Sarah Booth Delaney #20)

The next charming mystery from Carolyn Haines featuring spunky southern private investigator Sarah Booth Delaney.

When a ritually murdered corpse is discovered at the new-found Native-American temple site smack in the middle of Sunflower County, Mississippi, the archaeology crew on the dig is immediately under suspicion — with particular focus on its handsome, flirtatious leader, Dr. Frank Hafner. So when Sheriff Coleman Peters closes in on him, Hafner does the only logical thing: he hires the Delaney Detective Agency to clear his name.

Rumors swirl around Mount Salla, the burial mound created centuries before by the local Native tribes, and no one is sure what the site contains — bones, pottery, treasures, or a curse — but the victims start to add up. Sarah Booth and her partner, Tinkie, have too many likely suspects to whittle down the list. It’s a race against time once Sarah Booth’s resident ghost, Jitty, in the guise of various Native American warrior women, points to the waxing of the coming Crow Moon as the time of maximum danger.

Death and mystery cloak the site, and Sarah Booth isn’t sure who to trust or what to believe. But she won’t rest until she’s dug up the truth.