The Branson Beauty by Claire Booth is the debut book in the Sheriff Hank Worth Mystery series. (Available July 19, 2016).
The Branson Beauty, an old showboat, has crashed in the waters of an Ozark mountain lake just outside the popular tourist destination of Branson, Missouri. More than one hundred people are trapped aboard. Hank Worth is still settling into his new role as county sheriff, and when he responds to the emergency call, he knows he’s in for a long winter day of helping elderly people into rafts and bringing them ashore. He realizes that he’ll face anxiety, arguments, and extra costs for emergency equipment that will stretch the county’s already thin budget to the breaking point.
But he is absolutely not expecting to discover high school track star Mandy Bryson’s body locked inside the Captain’s private dining room. Suddenly, Hank finds himself embroiled in a murder investigation, with the county commissioner breathing down his neck and the threat of an election year ahead of him. And as he wades deeper into the investigation, Hank starts to realize he’s up against a web of small town secrets much darker and more tangled than he could have ever imagined.
CHAPTER 1
His feet crunched on the snow as he stumbled behind the Company Man. The guy had loafers on and still managed to keep his footing as they scrambled down the incline toward the lake. Hank’s heavy-duty snow boots, on the other hand, were not living up to their billing, he thought, as his feet went in opposite directions on a patch of ice.
Finally, he skidded to a stop at the edge of the water. The lake wasn’t a terribly wide one, but it was pretty. It lay like a shard of glass in the middle of the granite Ozark Mountains, its surface that glassy sheen only possible when it’s a degree or two from freezing solid.
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