A Risky Undertaking for Loretta Singletary: A Samuel Craddock Mystery

A controversy over the upcoming goat rodeo brings Loretta Singletary to the doorstep of Samuel Craddock, the police chief of Jarrett Creek, Tex., in Shames’s appealing eighth series mystery (after 2018’s A Reckoning in the Back Country). As a longtime friend, Samuel can’t help noticing Loretta’s updated wardrobe and hairstyle, but she becomes defensive when he tries to compliment her. When Samuel later realizes he hasn’t seen Loretta in days—she regularly brings him baked goods—his concern evolves from the worry about an unintended faux pas to that of her whereabouts. Samuel learns that Loretta began using an online dating site for small-town residents and was going to meet someone before she disappeared. Through the course of his investigation, Samuel wades into the foreign terrain of online dating. His anxiety builds when another woman from a nearby town disappears and turns up dead after meeting someone through the same site. Series fans and newcomers with a taste for well-wrought regional mysteries will be rewarded. Agent: Janet Reid, FinePrint Literary Management. (Jan.)