About this item
Former CIA operative Phoenix Smith goes with Acting Sheriff Annalynn Keyser to search for a missing farmer. They find him dead with a rifle at his side and a broken antler in his back. The women suspect a human framed a deer. Phoenix hunts for the deadly deer as an excuse to investigate the widow, a hostile neighbor, an ecoterrorist, and other suspects. She gains their confidence and picks their locks. She also protects the most vulnerable from both the killer and the law. Rule-bound Annalynn leads the official investigation, stretching the law and her ethics to convert Phoenix's illegally obtained leads into court-admissible evidence. As in Show Me the Murder, the friends rely on trust, love, and laughter to survive crimes and crises.
About the Author
Carolyn Mulford writes the Show Me mystery series. The books feature a wounded former CIA covert operative, Phoenix Smith, who returns to her hometown to recuperate and relax with a lifelong friend. In Show Me the Murder, Phoenix must adapt her spy skills to help the friend, Annalynn Carr Keyser, discover the truth about her husband's death--and to survive. In Show Me the Deadly Deer and later books, the two women continue to risk their lives to solve and prevent other murders. Achilles, a Belgian Malinois who flunked out of K-9 training, assists them with the work and with adjusting to personal crises.
In the fifth book, Show Me the Sinister Snowman, a blizzard traps Phoenix and friends in an isolated antebellum mansion with several murder suspects. In a review on Dru's Book Musings, award-winning book advocate Dru Ann Love said, "I enjoyed the tantalizing trails that the author planted for me in this engrossing drama of suspense and intrigue. The narrative pulled me in immediately ... With masterly adept dialogue and a snowbound setting where no one can escape, this drama kept me engaged in all that was happening and entertained as step by step, the plot thickened to a frenetic tempo as the story came to a fitting conclusion. This was a terrific read."
The first book in the series, Show Me the Murder, received the Missouri Writers' Guild's top award, the Walter Williams Major Work Award, in April 2014. The third book, Show Me the Gold, received the Guild's Best Book Award in 2015.
Carolyn also writes historical fiction for tweens and teens. The Historical Novels Society's newsletter called Thunder Beneath My Feet "a charming novel with a strong historical setting. The landscape, characters, and manners of speech all set the tone perfectly." The story takes place during the devastating New Madrid earthquakes of 1811-1812. The Missouri Writers' Guild gave it third place in its 2016 Major Work contest. Carolyn's first novel, The Feedsack Dress, became Missouri's Great Read at the 2009 National Book Festival in Washington, D.C.
Carolyn grew up on a farm near Kirksville, Missouri, and earned an M.A. in journalism from the University of Missouri. She served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ethiopia. There she became fascinated by other cultures and addicted to travel. That interest led her to visit 75 countries and work as a writer and editor on four continents. Her jobs included editing a United Nations magazine in Vienna, Austria, and a national service-learning magazine in Washington, D.C. As a freelancer, she wrote hundreds of articles and five nonfiction books, edited everything from calendars to conference proceedings, and taught courses and workshops on writing and editing. In 2007 she moved back to Missouri to focus on fiction.
