ALL THE DEAD LIE DOWN

Though she’s put in her time on wild and wooly cases (Under the Beetle’s Cellar, 1995, etc.), Lone Star Monthly writer Molly Cates has never run her biggest story to earth: the mystery of her father Vernon’s death, labeled a suicide by everybody but Molly for nearly 30 years. Now a chance sighting of Franny Lawrence Quinlan, Vernon’s ex-fiancÇe, and Olin Crocker, the crooked sheriff Molly is convinced killed the investigation, puts her back on the scent, even though everybody she talks to—from her godparents, Parnell and Rose Morrisey, to Frank Quinlan, the rival she was convinced had pulled the trigger to prevent Vernon’s exposÇ of his family’s oil company—tells her the evidence of suicide is clear, and she’ll be sorry if she reopens the case. Meantime, a second, even more momentous story is knocking on her door, if only she’d listen: Sarah Jane Hurley, a.k.a. Cow Lady, a friend of a retarded bag lady Molly interviewed for a story on street people, has overheard a plot to end the debate on a proposed law to allow concealed handguns by blowing up the Senate chambers, together with all those mostly unarmed legislators, in the Austin State House. Searingly effective grace notes by the dozen—Molly’s merciless badgering of her senile Aunt Harriet for evidence, her interview with a feisty former hooker, her fear that plotting revenge against Olin Crocker is turning her into one of the vigilantes she despises—bring Walker’s conventional double plot to a vivid life. (Literary Guild selection; Mystery Guild selection; author tour)