The Skeleton's Knee

When a reclusive market gardener's death proves to stem from a 20

year-old bullet wound, Lt. Joe Gunther is presented with a very cold

homicide to solve. But who was the victim exactly? A deeply private man

eking out an ascetic existence from a hardscrabble mountain field,

Abraham Fuller was virtually unknown to his neighbors, in the manner of

someone pursuing more than mere solitude. The discovery of a duffle of

unmarked bills and a body buried in the garden patch suggests that

Fuller had motives beyond misanthropy. Nor is it such a cold case

either, as someone seems willing to kill to ensure that old secrets

remain buried.