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Mark de Castrique

A river gives up its dead, but not its secrets...

Sam Blackman and Nakayla Robertson, private investigators in Asheville, North Carolina, are hired when a local environmentalist dies while monitoring water quality in the nearby Pigeon River. With no soil or water samples found near the body, his widow doesn't believe his death was an accident.

In fact, witnesses reported a public altercation between the environmentalist and local mill heir Luke Kirkpatrick just two days prior. Could Luke or his father, Ted, have committed murder to secure their proposed business expansion? Meanwhile, preparations for a local festival suffer violent setbacks, and the investigators worry the events are related. Can Sam and Nakayla identify the killer and serve justice before Asheville is threatened once again?

The eighth book featuring Private Investigators Blackman and Robertson, Fatal Scores, is a timely mystery perfect for fans private eyes and anyone with a taste for regional history.

Blackman Agency Investigations:

Blackman's Coffin

The Fitzgerald Ruse?

The Sandburg Connection

Murder in Passing

Poisoned Pen Press

Blackman Agency Investigations

Fatal Scores

In this unusual spin on the classic spy novel, murder strikes from our wartime pasts…

Iraq War veteran Sam Blackman with his prosthetic leg and his no-nonsense private eye partner Nakayla Robertson love their investigations which always carry a thread from the past—and they love each other. An interracial couple in the new South, the Asheville, NC, pair has surrounded themselves with a terrific support team including an unorthodox lawyer and a veteran cop. They deploy humor both to bind them together and to deflect insults. Plus, it helps deal with the tragedies their work uncovers.

Such a tragedy interrupts a meeting between the PIs and the neighboring law office when a body is unearthed from the grounds of the nearby Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute. During the Cold War it monitored developing space programs. Today it plays a vital role gathering weather and climate data. The body has been in the ground a long time. Why would its discovery spark off a new murder in Asheville's mountain music scene, the victim found amid the garbage of dark, dank Rat Alley?

She was the fiancée of the man murdered long ago. But surely this case is more than a domestic drama playing out over time….

The Blackman Agency Investigations excel at merging past and present, bringing little-known history to light, and are perfect for fans of James Lee Burke, Stephen Mack Jones, Margaret Maron, and Robert B. Parker.

Murder in Rat Alley

"A good choice for anyone who enjoys small-town mysteries and ghost stories." —Booklist

When private detective Sam Blackman agrees to help his partner and lover, Nakayla Robertson, conduct a fundraiser for orphaned twin boys, he does so to ease his conscience. The boys' parents were killed in a courtroom shootout where Sam was the key witness against the twins' father.

The charity event, a nighttime ghost tour of the legendary haunted sites of Asheville, North Carolina, seems harmless enough. Sam only has to tell the story of a grief-stricken woman who hanged herself from an old, arched stone bridge. "Helen, come forth!" he cries. Sam and his tour-goers expect the actress playing Helen's ghost to walk toward them from the bridge's dark recesses. Instead, her body tumbles from overhead and dangles at the end of a noose. Someone has reenacted the legend with deadly authenticity.

When a second murder mimics another old ghost tale, the police fear a macabre serial killer is on the prowl. But the case isn't Sam's to solve. Then, a tidal wave of evidence begins to point to one man—Sam's friend, defense attorney Hewitt Donaldson. Sam and Nakayla, firmly believing in Donaldson's innocence, must not only prove it, but halt a murderer seemingly bent on retribution. Does the killer's motivation rise from the present, or is Team Donaldson dealing with some specter from the past?

A Specter of Justice

"[A] marvelous blend of history and mystery..." —Publishers Weekly STARRED review

It should have been routine, a simple assignment for PI Sam Blackman and his partner Nakayla Robertson. Follow a history professor who's suing a spinal surgeon for malpractice and catch her in physical activities that undercut her claim.

When professor Janice Wainwright visits Connemara, Carl Sandburg's home in Flat Rock, N.C., and climbs the arduous trail to the top of Glassy Mountain, Sam believes he has the evidence needed to expose her—until he finds the woman semiconscious and bleeding on the mountain's granite outcropping. Her final words: "It's the Sandburg verses. The Sandburg verses."

As the person to discover the dying woman, Sam becomes the first suspect. An autopsy reveals painkillers in her blood and solid proof of the surgeon's errors. Why did this suffering woman attempt to climb the mountain? Did she stumble and fall? Did someone cause her death?

A break-in at the Wainwright farmhouse and the theft of Sandburg volumes convince Sam someone is seeking potentially deadly information. But what did Pulitzer Prize winner Sandburg have in his literary collection that inspires multiple murders? And who will be targeted next?

The Sandburg Connection

"An excellent regional mystery, full of local color and historical detail." —Library Journal

Former Chief Warrant Officer Sam Blackman lost a leg in Iraq and emerged from the V.A. hospital in Asheville, NC, as a bitter civilian without a job or a future. But when he solved a series of local murders, Sam found new meaning for his life. Now he and his partner, Nakayla Robertson, are opening a detective agency. They have high hopes that the thriving mountain region will provide a steady stream of cases.

Their first client, a quirky elderly woman in a retirement community, makes a strange request. She wants Sam to right a wrong she committed more than 70 years ago. Her victim: F. Scott Fitzgerald. Her crime: stealing a manuscript. Sam's task seems simple enough: retrieve the woman's lockbox and deliver the manuscript to Fitzgerald's heirs.

But nothing is simple for Sam. The lockbox is sealed with a swastika, a symbol his client insists predates the Nazis and reflects a scene from The Great Gatsby. Then a security guard is killed and the lockbox disappears. Not only has this investigation triggered a murder, but Sam's final military case has followed him from Iraq and neither he nor anyone close to him is safe....

The Fitzgerald Ruse

"A wealth of historical detail, an exciting treasure hunt and credible characters distinguish this fresh, adventurous read." —Publishers Weekly STARRED review

Sam Blackman is an angry man. A Chief Warrant Officer in the Criminal Investigation Detachment of the U.S. military, he lost a leg in Iraq. His outspoken criticism of his medical treatment resulted in his transfer to the Veteran's Hospital in Asheville, NC. Disillusioned with the military, grieving over the recent death of his parents, and at odds with his brother, Sam's life is in shambles. Then an ex-marine and fellow amputee named Tikima Robertson walks into his hospital room.

Tikima hints she has an opportunity for Sam to use his investigative skills—if he can stop feeling sorry for himself. But before she can return, Tikima is murdered, her body found floating in the French Broad River. Sam was the last person to see her alive.

Tikima's sister, Nakayla, brings Sam a journal she finds in Tikima's apartment. A note stuck to the inside cover reads "For Sam Blackman." The volume dates to 1919 and contains the entries of a twelve-year-old boy who accompanies his father, a white funeral director, as they help a black man, Elijah Robertson, transport his deceased relative from Asheville to a small family plot in Georgia.

The link to the present? Nearly 90 years ago, Elijah's body was also found in the French Broad River, a crime foreshadowing the death of his great-great-granddaughter Tikima.

Sam and Nakayla must delve into Asheville's rich history, the legacy of the Vanderbilts at the Biltmore estate, and of author Tom Wolfe to uncover the murderous truth.

Blackman's Coffin

2018 Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award nominee

"With its strong sense of place, depiction of racial tension that still lingers in the new South, and appealing sleuths, de Castrique's well-plotted mystery is a winner." —Library Journal

When Asheville, NC, private eyes Sam Blackman and Nakayla Robertson are asked by an eighty-year-old client to investigate the suspicious death of her brother, they warn her there is little chance of success. Paul Weaver died nearly seventy years earlier. The only documentation she has is the sole surviving copy of a coroner's report stating his death was caused by an accidental fall while hiking.

There's a red flag: local son Weaver knew every inch of the mountain trails. The returning World War II veteran had enrolled at Black Mountain College, a liberal local school with an international reputation for innovation, thanks to its stellar faculty and advisers like Buckminster Fuller and Albert Einstein. The college of the 1940s is currently being portrayed in a film being shot on the site of its former location. The plot is based on a book by a local author. The research behind both may provide a lead in the Weaver case.

One is drawn from movie crew member Harlan Beale, an octogenarian mountaineer who knew Weaver. In a late-night voice message, Beale tells Sam he's found something to show him. Then Beale is discovered dead in the Black Mountain College Museum. His murder turns the cold case white hot. When a second killing follows, the question becomes how to separate dark doings in the present from dark days and hidden scars of the post-war past. In typical de Castrique fashion, the answers aren't what you expect.

No-nonsense Nakayla and veteran Sam with his prosthetic leg love their investigations which always carry a thread from the past, and love each other. An interracial couple in the South, even the new South around Asheville, they've surrounded themselves with a terrific support team including an unorthodox lawyer and a veteran cop, and use humor both to bind them all together and to deflect insults. Plus, it helps deal with the tragedies their work uncovers.