Book description
“You want to borrow a casket?” Funeral director and part-time sheriff
Barry Clayton finds Jaycee member Archie Donovan's request absurd until
he learns the casket will be the centerpiece of the Jaycees' haunted
house, a charity event with all proceeds going to the children's
hospital. But when the president of the Jaycees is found murdered in the
casket on Halloween, the national press descends upon Gainesboro to
cover the bizarre crime. Sheriff Tommy Lee Wadkins assigns Barry to be
the lead investigator of a case that presents no motive and no suspects.
Then someone fires a shot at Archie Donovan, and Barry wonders whether
the victim in the casket was even the intended target. Barry finds his
police work and personal life on a collision course as his ex-wife
Rachel comes to town with high hopes of using the story to launch her TV
network career. She begins prying into the lives of Gainesboro's most
distinguished citizens and creates a backlash that leaves another body
in its wake. Barry Clayton must follow a trail of clues as winding as a
forest path. The unexpected destination: a mountainside of Christmas
trees. Somewhere behind them lurks a killer. Unmasking him may be a
fatal undertaking. Who better to investigate a killing in a coffin
than Buryin' Barry, deputy-cum-undertaker? Slick insurance man Archie
Donovan wants funeral director Barry Clayton to lend him a coffin for
the Jaycees' Halloween haunted house. It helps that Barry's girlfriend
Susan came up with the idea and that Barry, as a deputy sheriff, has
been assigned to monitor the event. But on Halloween night, Carl
Atkinson, hard-drinking and obnoxious president of the Jaycees, fails to
pop up from the coffin to scare House visitors because he's been stabbed
in the back with a buck knife. Archie sheepishly confesses that his
secret affair with Angel Crowder, whose husband Pete is a first-class
hothead, may have made him the intended target. This theory gets
traction when somebody takes a shot at Archie during Sheriff Tommy Lee's
morning press conference. Tommy Lee puts Barry in charge of the case,
straining relations with rival Reece Hutchins, and assigns him two
dogged deputies. Even more strain comes in the person of Barry's ex-wife
Rachel, now a fiercely ambitious TV reporter, who turns up like the
proverbial bad penny. The case gets more complicated with the discovery
that Carl was in deep to loan sharks and with a shaky confession that
ties the murder to the death of a local war hero in a car accident.
Buryin' Barry's fifth (Final Undertaking, 2007, etc.) is busy but a bit
aimless. Still, de Castrique's style is clean and direct, ideal for the
armchair sleuth. Mark de Castrique grew up in the mountains of western
North Carolina where his mysteries are set. Mark is a veteran of the
television and film production industry, and he serves as an adjunct
professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Dangerous
Undertaking is the first in the series
