WINTER, 1942-THE U.S. HAS JUST ENTERED WORLD WAR II. Clarke Deveau, betrayed by his wife and dismissed in disgrace by the U.S. Justice Department, returns home to the little piece that is left of his family plantation near Jekyll Island on the Georgia Coast. Taking on a case involving a questionable death by accident, he finds himself unwittingly drawn into a tangle of deception, murder, and treason-including a beautiful French refugee, killer horses, traitorous industrialists, Nazi and Communist agents, New Jersey thugs, and even a German U-Boat. In the tradition of James Lee Burke, Martin Wilson tells a ripping good mystery along with an intense examination of the life of an unusual area of the South. * * * SHOTWELL PUBLISHING mysteries appear under the imprint name "Gold-Bug Mysteries." The first detective story, The Gold-Bug was written by the great Southerner Edgar Allan Poe and set near Charleston, South Carolina.