Jack and the Beanstalk — Ed McBain

August in West Florida, a little bit of hell on earth. Jack McKinney, looking barely old enough to shave, stood in the swelter of Matthew Hope's Calusa County law office, spilling out a wide-eyed tale about wanting to buy a snap-bean farm. And he had the down payment to prove it. Four thousand in cash.

Now Jack's dead, stabbed fourteen times, and thirty-six thousand's missing. In cash. Matthew's questions are turning up some long-buried pasts, a second dead body, and some beautiful suspects. Like Sunny, Jack's sister, a surfer boy's fantasy, a delicious girl with some unsavory secrets. Or Veronica, a grown man's dream, a tough and lovely cattle rancher who's strangely unmoved by her son's death. Florida's getting hotter by deadly degrees, as Matthew bets it all against a scared killer with nothing left to lose...