Mark de Castrique Books in Order

Former Army investigator Sam Blackman is rebuilding his life after losing a leg in Iraq when fellow amputee Tikima Robertson is murdered. A 1919 journal points Sam toward an old Asheville crime with deadly consequences in the present.

Former police officer Barry Clayton returns to Gainesboro to run the family funeral home. A brutal shooting at a graveside service draws him into a conspiracy involving property, power, and a dangerous truth people have worked hard to bury.

While overseeing an exhumation on a snowy mountainside, Barry Clayton finds a second skeleton with a bullet wound. A photograph links the dead man to Barry's girlfriend, forcing him to uncover old lies before they destroy her life.

The body of a Vietnam War hero disappears from Barry Clayton's funeral home on the eve of a major service. With a Boston detective's help, Barry follows a dying message into military secrets, betrayal, and murder.

Hospital volunteer Gene Adamson hears a dying man's warning about a hidden list, then sees bodies vanish from the morgue. With geneticist's daughter Jeanne Everston, he races to expose a deadly medical conspiracy.

After Sheriff Tommy Lee Wadkins is shot at a street dance, Barry Clayton takes charge of the investigation. What looks like one grieving man's violence leads to fraud and exploitation aimed at vulnerable older people.

In 1860, teenage twins Jeb Bennett and Rachel Leigh board a new train bound for Charleston. When murder erupts amid growing sectional tensions, they join a Pinkerton detective to sort through motives, alibis, and deception.

On their first agency case, Sam Blackman and Nakayla Robertson seek a stolen manuscript linked to F. Scott Fitzgerald. A missing lockbox and a murdered guard turn a literary errand into a dangerous investigation.

A charity haunted-house event ends with its organizer dead inside a borrowed casket. Barry Clayton investigates, but a second attack and his ex-wife's arrival make the case increasingly personal in a town full of buried grudges.

A surveillance assignment at Carl Sandburg's former estate turns deadly when Sam Blackman finds an injured professor. Soon accused himself, Sam and Nakayla must decode literary clues and mountain history before another killer strikes.

This short-story collection contains two tales set in seemingly simpler times. Each begins with ordinary people and familiar circumstances, then introduces the kind of unexpected complication that changes what everyone thought they understood.

When widely disliked Birdie Campbell dies, a North Carolina funeral home struggles to organize a respectful memorial. The search for someone willing to praise her unleashes conflicts that threaten both the service and the business itself.

Former Secret Service agent Russell Mullins doubts that a Federal Reserve executive died by suicide. Then falsified financial records frame him for murder, sending him after a conspiracy that could cripple the American financial system.

A skeleton found near a historic freed-slave community gives Sam Blackman a mystery he is told to leave alone. Then an elderly woman is arrested for murder, and Sam and Nakayla uncover a crime shaped by betrayal and racial prejudice.

In 2030, physicist Jonathan Singer is preparing to launch a super collider when an older version of himself arrives with a warning. As someone tries to kill him, Jonathan must decide whether to destroy the work that defines his life.

Cherokee remains found at a cemetery expansion ignite a bitter local dispute. When an activist is murdered on a prominent woman's grave, funeral director Barry Clayton must untangle a clash involving development, tradition, a hit man, and a missing child.

A fundraiser ghost tour becomes a real murder scene when an actress is found hanging from a bridge. Sam Blackman and Nakayla Robertson must clear a friend while confronting old wounds, local legends, and a possible serial killer.

Security specialist Rusty Mullins is hired to protect AI scientist Dr. Lisa Li after attacks kill leading researchers. Their investigation crosses Washington, private technology interests, and covert research in a race to control artificial intelligence.

Sam Blackman and Nakayla Robertson reopen a seventy-year-old death ruled accidental. When a potential witness is murdered, clues involving Black Mountain College, wartime memory, and a film production show that someone still fears the truth.

During Gainesboro's Apple Festival Parade, a gunman critically wounds Barry Clayton's Uncle Wayne. A second death quickly proves the attack is part of a larger scheme, sending Barry and Sheriff Wadkins toward organized crime and federal secrets.

Human remains unearthed near an old Cold War research site bring Sam Blackman and Nakayla Robertson into a new homicide case. Wartime intelligence, Asheville history, and a modern killing converge around someone determined to keep the past buried.

An environmental watchdog dies while testing water near Asheville, and Sam Blackman and Nakayla Robertson suspect murder. Their search exposes pressure from a powerful family, a troubled river, and a string of attacks no one wants connected.

When a Secret Service agent is murdered outside her Arlington home, retired FBI agent Ethel Fiona Crestwater starts asking questions. With her college-age cousin Jesse, she follows stolen cash and corruption toward people willing to silence them.

A violent attack leaves one victim dead and another comatose, drawing retired FBI agent Ethel Fiona Crestwater into political danger. With Jesse beside her, Ethel faces lobbyists, operatives, and a killer tied to a consequential Supreme Court case.

A former colleague draws retired FBI agent Ethel Fiona Crestwater back into an operation that went wrong eighteen years earlier. With classified information at stake, Ethel and her cousin Jesse face adversaries prepared to kill for the truth.