Murder at the Jumpoff

When Donald MacIntyre, an avid off-trail hiker, fails to return from a quest to bushwhack through difficult terrain to the top of the Jumpoff, a dramatic cliff in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, good-natured back-country ranger Hector Jones leads a search-and-rescue team into the remotest depths of the Greenbrier section of the park and discovers MacIntyre's body. From the nature of MacIntyre's injuries, it is clear that he fell to his death from the top of the Jumpoff. Or was he pushed?The job of investigating the suspicious death goes to Sally Connolly, a 31-year-old detective with the Sevier County, Tennessee, sheriff's office. Due to Hector's expert knowledge of the hiking trails, Sally enlists his help in the investigation, and they follow several leads. One lead reveals a feud between MacIntyre, who was a professor at the University of Tennessee, and a rival professor at Emory University. The second concerns the illegal digging of plants in the park on behalf of MacIntyre's wife, who has a garden design business. And a third lead reveals a complicated relationship with an older female hiking friend.Murder at the Jumpoff is a novel with a powerful sense of place and unusual characters who challenge themselves to seek excitement, beauty, and fulfillment from undiscovered, treacherous mountain landscapes--and from those they dare to love.