H. A. Covington

Bonnie Blue Murder: a Civil War Murder Mystery H. A. Covington

APRIL, 1861. As the Confederate cannon opens fire on Fort Sumter and the Civil War begins. A rebel officer on a courier run to the telegraph office, is murdered in a historic Charleston graveyard and his pouch of secret despatches stolen. How did he come to be there? Is it the work of a Union spy? Former Charleston Police Inspector and now Confederate Officer, Major Hugo Legare is assigned to the case. Meanwhile the civilian police arrest a young Jewish soldier, Simon Mendoza, and charge him with murder and espionage. The evidence against Mendoza is dangerously strong andanti-Semitic incitement fills the newspapers, feeding thefires of suspicion and bigotry. But Major Legare is not convinced. There are holes in the police case against Mendoza. Legare and his associate, scapegrace Irish nobleman Captain James Redmond, quickly turn up more than a few skeletons in the dead man's closet as well as a plethora of new suspects including a Boston abolitionist, the beautiful daughter of the city's most wealthy citizen, and one of their own brother officers. But while Legare hunts the killer through the gaslit streets of old Charleston, more bodies start piling up. Legare and Redmond must race against time to stop more murders and recover the vital documents which could change the course of the whole war.