Heat Lightning

In all the years of their marriage, Clara Trent's husband failed to mention his involvement in a murderamp;mdash;and now he's not only dead himself, but accused of committing it. When St. Elmo sheriff's investigator Aaron Malone re-opens the forty-year-old cold case, Ronan Trent's namedamp;mdash;posthumouslyamp;mdash;as the killer of his previous lover, a vivacious blonde with a jealous husband. Clara's discovery of sensuous drawings of the woman, unlike any of her husban's other work, reveals a carefully concealed obsession.

As she tries to reconcile her recently deceased husband with the facts of the brutal bludgeoning, she's led back to the scene of the crime, a shabby fifties-style motor court where, as befits a dedicated detective, she takes a room to investigate.

Aaron tries to warn her she may be stirring up a hornet's nest, but she proceeds to pursue the truth with the tenacious grip of a drowning swimmer on a lifeline. And the hornet's nest materializesamp;mdash;folks are definitely riled up; some of them are even turning up dead.