The Empress of Junk Street

Fiddler’s Bend Mystery Book 1

Getting to the truth can be the most difficult puzzle of all.

Mallory Clarkson, a woman on the cusp of forty, arrives in Fiddler’s Bend, Vermont, after inheriting a one-eyed beagle and the properties of her puzzle-loving uncle. But this is no gothic tale about inheriting a mysterious mansion. Mallory’s uncle was Vermont’s version of a slumlord, and she finds herself in possession of a neighborhood—clapboard tenement houses, a derelict car wash, a defunct gas station, row houses, vacant lots…

As the expanse of the properties she’s inherited sinks in, Mallory fears she won’t be able to handle it all. Still, when she finds her uncle’s assistant unconscious on the floor of a ransacked home office, she becomes determined to uncover the truth behind the attack. As Mallory digs into the crime, she unearths a well-founded rumor that her uncle’s last pet project was a treasure hunt with a half-million dollar prize hidden at its end. Suspecting it’s behind the attack and the neighborhood’s escalating crime wave, she goes on the hunt.

Mallory might know nothing about the landlording business, but she’s a master when it comes to solving clues. However, to unscramble this puzzling mystery and get to the end of what’s quickly becoming a treacherous search, she’ll need more than her hodgepodge of skills. Untangling truth from lies will require all she has plus the help of the Junk Street community who are now her bickering and demanding tenants.

A feisty Vermont mystery by award-winning author Trish Esden