Palmetto Blood — Reed Bunzel

What did TV reporter Rebecca Rose do that got her brutally murdered and left in a dirty gutter in downtown Charleston? That's what Jack Conner -- crime scene clean-up technician, recently discharged Iraq War veteran, and the victim's one-time lover -- wants to know when he and his crew are called early one morning to sanitize her murder scene. The Charleston police are seeking answers to the same question, and when they learn of Conner's romantic link to the victim they waste no time bringing him in for questioning as a “person of interest.” Still dealing with emotional and physical scars from the battlefield, Conner takes it upon himself to find Rebecca's real killer -- a search that leads him to start scratching the underbelly of the South Carolina Lowcountry. “Reed Bunzel peels away the layers of mystery like a master of the genre. The American South hasn't seemed this hot, menacing and filled with surprises in ages. Bravo to a fine writer and a splendid novel.” �" T. Jefferson Parker, author of The Jaguar & The Border Lords “Taut and elegantly written, gritty in the land of genteel, nothing runs colder than Palmetto Blood. Reed Bunzel totally gets the rich contradictions of coastal Carolina ... He makes you want to move down immediately �" then makes you scared to.” �" Ellis Henican, New York Newsday “Captures the sights, sounds, and smells of Charleston and the South Carolina Low Country with accuracy and feeling. His characters ... face death and danger with excitement and real-life drama.” �" Joseph L.S. Terrell, author of Tide Of Darkness & Overwash Of Evil