So Dead

Rotten aristocratic relatives, murder, ancient bones, strange clues, ghosts who won't stay buried, village in peril, lies, dark secrets and twenty-two million dollars at stake. What good southern girl wouldn't dive into the middle of that! No one has ever accused Meg Talbot of being a good southern girl but when it comes to diving into trouble, she’s the champ. This time the trouble has turned deadly. Danger lurks everywhere and Meg is in the killer’s cross-hairs…

The last thing Meg Talbot, a genetic mixture of old aristocracy and a Cherokee grandmother, expects her grandfather Alistair to say is that he has discovered the bones of their ancestor, Thackery Talbot, a minor robber baron who mysteriously disappeared in 1899. Granted, odd things happen in Eureka Springs, the most mentioned town in Ripley’s Believe it or Not. But for Granddad to say that he’d found Thackery’s bones inside a wax statue of Henry VIII that has been standing in the local museum for well over a hundred years went beyond the pale, even for Eureka. Is his story true or simply the fantasy of an elderly mind? Of course everyone had assumed old Thackery was moldering somewhere by now but, as the family elders like to say, his money is still good. Unfortunately, Thackery’s wife had locked his twenty-two million in an irrevocable trust that could only be claimed by the person who discovered his fate. His descendants, an unruly assortment of dethroned aristocrats, would gladly knock off their favorite uncle to lay hands on the fortune. Then Alistair is found dead at the bottom of a long concrete staircase. Twenty-two million dollars is a powerful motivation for murder. To Meg it makes her family the most likely suspects–but they're not the only ones. When Meg learns that certain townspeople are seething with motives as well, it's up to her to sort facts from lies. Can she nail her grandfather's killer and put him in the slammer before she finds herself knocking on heaven’s door? “So Dead” is a romp through family chaos and small town drama. It is filled with chuckles, pathos, love, anger, secrets, fear, hope, and the strength born of one woman's dogged determination to risk everything for the truth.

Patricia Gale is the sister team of Gayl Wilson and Pat Hine. They grew up on the Oklahoma prairie with little besides their nearest neighbor, Keith, and their own imaginations to entertain them. Pat does most of the research for the team because she’s a compulsive student. Gayl writes most of the text because she likes spinning longwinded tales. Gayl creates adorable characters and Pat figures out ways to knock them off. They were media majors in college. They have written and edited for newspapers and association magazines for most of their lives. Their hobbies and loves have always included family, horses, any real or imagined mystery, floating down the river in an inner tube, exploring foreign countries and anything to do with nature. They both garden. Their Cherokee great grandmother was an expert in healing plants. However, the sisters are partial to Belladonna, Foxglove and other tasty poisons. They deny any knowledge of bodies in the potting shed. Their ancestors include Mayflower passengers, gangsters, Wild West bandits and the sheriff those bandits shot. One ancestor reputedly did roast some guys from Kentucky who encroached on Cherokee territory, but they'd rather not talk about that.