THE BRANSON BEAUTY

Set in the Missouri Ozarks, a new county sheriff discovers a dead body on an old showboat and must uncover which of the passengers could be the killer.

The Branson Beauty, an old showboat cruising the waters of an Ozark mountain lake, has crashed, trapping more than a hundred people aboard. When new county sheriff Hank Worth responds to the emergency call, he knows he’s in for a long winter’s day of helping elderly people into rafts and bringing them ashore. He anticipates a lot of anxiety, many arguments, and extra costs for emergency equipment that will stretch the county’s already thin budget to the breaking point. And that would have been a terrible day all on its own. But the discovery of high school track star Mandy Bryson’s body in a locked room makes matters much more complicated. Now Hank’s got his first big case, and while he knows the killer must have been one of the people on the boat, there aren’t many other clues to go on. With the ship’s owner hell-bent on avoiding as much bad publicity as possible, a department populated with good old boys who don’t much care for their new boss, and a lead witness who went into shock when the boat crashed, Hank knows he has to solve this case quickly, not only for Mandy’s family, but to prove that his selection as sheriff was the right one. With THE BRANSON BEAUTY, true crime author, ghost writer, and former reporter, Claire Booth makes her fiction debut with this fantastic mystery that relies heavily on her knowledge of criminal investigations, her ability to create a broad cast of wonderfully compelling characters, and a style that perfectly blends humor with the emotional drama and heartache of a murder investigation.