Conan Flagg

The police called it an accident. The dead man's wife insisted it was murder. Either way it was maddeningly mysterious. Captain Harold Jeffries, swaddled in his robe, had settled down for a cozy evening with Crime and Punishment when his wife left the house for a bridge party. An hour later he was dead. What could have induced him to dress and go out into the stormy night - much less to walk on the beach, which he hated and never went near?

"I'll be on your patio at four o'clock. If you aren't there, I'll understand...." This is the gist of the mysterious plea for help that Conan Flagg finds lying on the counter of his Holliday Beach Book Shop. The writer is beautiful Isadora Canfield, a concert pianist and daughter of the late Oregon Senator John Canfield, in whose will she would become a millionairess. Isadora wants Conan to find out who is keeping her under 24-hour surveillance,.

The war between the McFalls and the Drinkwaters had taken a nasty turn: someone had dynamited a reservoir, depriving the Drinkwaters' Double D ranch of its precious water supply. And Aaron McFall’s eldest son George was found dead at the site, apparently killed in the blast. It looked as though George had been the victim of his own plan for wanton destruction, but his old friend Conan Flagg thought otherwise.

In 1940, Leland Langtry ran off with his redheaded secretary and $10,000 in company funds. Or so everyone believed. Forty years later, Langtry's remains are found in a boarded-up silver mine tunnel. And as the knife still jammed between his ribs had belonged to his partner in Lang-Star Mining, Tom Starbuck - also long since dead - a jury decided that Tom had killed Langtry. But Tom's widow, Delia, resists the verdict and persuades that very private investigator Conan Flagg to find the real murderer.

In 1940, Leland Langtry ran off with his redheaded secretary and $10,000 in company funds... Or so everyone believed... Forty years later, Langtry's remains are found in a boarded-up silver mine tunnel. And as the knife still jammed between his ribs had belonged to his partner in Lang-Star Mining, Tom Starbuck - also long since dead - a jury decided that Tom had killed Langtry. But Tom's widow, Delia, resists that verdict and persuades that very private investigator Conan Flagg to find the real murderer.

Who killed darlin' Corey? In the sixth novel in the Conan Flagg series, the Oregon detective is investigating the mysterious, untimely death of his friend Corey Benbow. It seemed to Flagg that the police were asking too few questions about the fatal automobile accident that claimed the young woman's life - especially since it was common knowledge in the town of Holiday Beach that more than one person stood to gain from her death.

The celebrated author Ravin Gould, his equally celebrated actress wife, the media, the locals, and as many tourists as can cram themselves into Conan Flagg's bookstore are all on hand for that electric moment when Cady MacGill, the sheriff's son-in-law, threatens to cut off a vital portion of Gould's anatomy with a chain saw. Less than 24 hours later, Ravin Gould is dead, and Cady MacGill has been charged with his murder. But bookstore owner and private investigator Conan Flagg doesn't read the situation that way.

When conservative millionaire A. C. King hosts his annual house party at his spacious mountain lodge, he has no idea it will be the last family reunion. Yet the mellow autumn air is tension-filled with the presence of A. C.'s beautiful second wife, the constrained animosities of his two older sons, and the tippling of his flower-child daughter-in-law. But it is the unwelcome arrival of youngest son Lucas, with a ravishing black fiancée in tow, that is the true kiss of death.