Ghost of a Chance
Eric Wilder
(Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
2005 PublishAmerica
ISBN: 141375936X

Oklahoma City PI Buck McDivit learns his aunt has been murdered across the border in Texas in an old cotton town.

Buck McDivit has grown up in foster homes & after years of hunting for other people's lost relatives, he decides to research his own family. Upon discovering he has an aunt & that she has recently died under mysterious circumstances, he comes to Deception to find out more, & take a look at the land she owned.

Deception was once an overnight stop on a landlocked waterway where riverboats carried cotton to New Orleans. Now it is a tourist trap controlled by Hogg Nation & his cronies in the Invisible Empire (Ku Klux Klan), two of whom are the judge & the only lawyer in town. If you're not white, life in Deception is tough. If you own land Hogg Nation wants, your life isn't worth the paper it's written on -- especially if you left a will. Things vanish, & people die, & the coroner knows what's expected of him.

Upon arriving Buck goes to the aid of a large, passive black man being harassed by two of the meanest-looking humans. Later, when he's meeting Aunt Emma's lawyer at the restaurant, he gets plied with the local brew which makes him very drunk, & Raymond, who he rescued earlier drives Buck to his aunt's home. There he meets Pearl who cared for his aunt & her resort.

Waking up from his drunken sleep in the middle of a hot & steamy night, Buck stumbles out to the waterfront only to be mesmerized by an apparition.

Now Buck has two mysteries to unravel. What happened to his aunt's will & to the girl from the past. What he uncovers is a crime, & a countywide conspiracy.

Along the way he meets Lila Richardson, the local antiquities expert & heir to a cotton plantation, investigating a sunken riverboat filled with Confederate gold.

Ghost of a Chance is an interesting, atmospheric evening's reading.
(08/28/05)

Rebecca