Candle Snuffer — Bill Stackhouse

Even with a left leg shattered by a drug dealer's bullet and a medical retirement from the Detroit Police Force, former homicide captain Ed McAvoy feels he's too young to be put out to pasture.

With the slower pace in the Catskills, being Chief of Police in Peekamoose Heights will be sort of like running a country club, or so he thinks. After all, how much crime can there be?

McAvoy soon discovers that his skills as a homicide detective will not atrophy from lack of use in Peekamoose Heights. Murder, as it turns out, is an equal-opportunity crime that not only resides in large bustling cities like Detroit, but in sleepy little Catskill villages like Peekamoose Heights as well.

In this, the fifth, Ed McAvoy Mystery, the ex-wife of a prominent U.S. Senator, her Country/Western singer lover, and the driver of the limousine in which they had been riding are all killed in a tragic traffic accident while trying to shake off a cadre of photographers. The sole survivor, the singer's bodyguard Darren Corbett, has been left with total amnesia about the crash and the events leading up to it. But Darren's memory is starting to return in disjointed bits and pieces, and attempts have been made on his life. Even when he visits his old Air Force buddy Porky Jarvis in Peekamoose Heights in an effort to escape from public view, the attempts continue. Now it's up to McAvoy to try and discover who wants Darren dead, and why.