Book 9 in the Sean Colbeth Investigates series
It’s been one hell of a year.
On leave from the Maine State Police after dealing with a brutal case that nearly broke him, Commander Sean Colbeth takes stock of his life and finds himself at loose ends. Despite landing on his feet after being abruptly terminated as the Chief of Police for Windeport, Maine, his new position as Statewide Commander for Major Crimes came with more strings attached than he’d realized; while used to dealing with the political whims of a small Village Council, the bureaucracy in Augusta has turned it into a fine art — one that he has no stomach for. Seizing on the Christmas Holiday like it was a life preserver tossed to a drowning swimmer, he goes full-blown midlife crisis, buys a Mustang and drives to Tampa in the vain hope of restoring his strained relationship with his father.
The endless Interstate miles do little to ease the turmoil in his mind, though, and the chilly reception he finds when he arrives in Florida doesn’t help. It’s almost a blessing when he receives an unexpected call from his boss back in Maine on Christmas morning: a local detective Sean previously crossed paths with has a suspicious death on her hands at a sprawling retirement community outside of Orlando, and wants the best investigator on the East Coast to take a second look at the case. With ten days to kill before his best friend’s long overdue wedding, Sean figures there could be worse ways to spend the time and agrees to consult.
As he begins to poke and prod the AARP set, though, he uncovers a unexpectedly vibrant web of deceit hidden beneath the manicured golf courses and cookie-cutter homes, and a community anything but sorry to see one of their own pass on to the great beyond. For it seems the victim had a long history of being a thorn in the side of the local political establishment — and a plan to upend all of it, one that only their untimely death could prevent.
Drawn into a cold war waged between silver haired neighbors with long memories and even longer lists of grievances, Sean fights back his own demons as only he can to expose a murderer intent on maintaining the status quo — however intolerable that might be.
Coming in 2026