Folly Beach Mystery Series

An early-morning phone call from a friend asking Chris Landrum if he’d heard anything about a skeleton discovered on Mosquito Beach, an African American enclave fewer than a handful of miles from Chris’ home on Folly Beach, South Carolina, soon embroils Chris and a few of his friends into trying to solve a mystery dating back 60 plus years. Chris and Charles, his friend and self-proclaimed private detective, quest for answers takes on life or death proportions when two more of Chris’s acquaintances are killed, and his friend Al Washington is next in the killer’s sights.

The theft of a Rolex worth more than most new vehicles begins a series of burglaries casting a dark shadow on the Christmas season for Folly Beach, the small South Carolina barrier island. The number of suspects drastically increases when Mackey’s Miracle Troupe, a group of singers and actors, arrives on Folly. The Troupe’s leader Peter Mackey claims the visit is to bring an upbeat message to the community while performing good deeds throughout the island, but its arrival at the same time the burglaries begin is too coincidental to be overlooked.

There were numerous better ways for retiree Chris Landrum to begin his day than to listen to a traumatized friend Virgil DeBonnet telling him how he found a body with a knife sticking out his back, floating in a small boat less than a half mile from Chris's cottage.

With Halloween rapidly approaching, retired bureaucrat Chris Landrum would like nothing more than for his least favorite holiday to skip his adopted hometown of Folly Beach, South Carolina. The hopes of a quiet October drifts away on the tide when Chris’ friend Charles Fowler stumbles upon the dead body of a curiously dressed woman with a hatchet firmly placed in her back.

A pleasant walk along the coast on Folly Beach, South Carolina, thrusts retiree Chris Landrum and his friend Charles Fowler into investigating a death that police are convinced was an unfortunate accident. Their resolve to continue sticking their noses where according to the police they have no business being was strengthened when a second person dies—the second death of a member of the small crew building a beachfront home.

Chris Landrum’s least favorite holiday was rapidly approaching, and his wish was that Halloween would slip away like a phantom disappearing into the fog. The retired bureaucrat’s hopes were shattered when a man walking within inches of him was gunned down. Chris then learns the dead man was on Folly for a conference of psychics, mediums, witches, palm readers, and others with paranormal powers.

Chris Landrum answers an early morning call and the first words he hears from his best friend Charles Fowler are, “Called the police chief yet?” The retiree didn’t have to be a psychic to know nothing good was coming next. He learns that an acquaintance on his adopted island of Folly Beach, South Carolina, has been murdered and according to the police, suspects are nowhere to be found, which, of course, leads Charles, a self-proclaimed private detective, to declare that it was up to Chris and him to solve the crime.

A book release party at a local bookstore is interrupted by the arrival of a police officer announcing a man was murdered on Bowen Island, located fewer than two miles from Chris Landrum’s adopted home on Folly Beach, South Carolina. Even before the identity of the victim is known, the retired bureaucrat’s best friend and self-proclaimed private detective Charles Fowler decides it’s their responsibility to catch the killer.