Plunder
A Faye Longchamp Mystery

Time is not on Faye Longchamps side. She and her husband Joe are working near the mouth of the Mississippi, researching archaeological sites soon to be swamped by oil. The Deepwater Horizon disaster has morphed her runofthemill contract job into a task that might swamp her fledgling company. It isnt helping that an injured babysitter has left Faye to work with a toddler underfoot. An adolescent girl is drawn to Faye, perhaps because she idolizes the confident archaeologist. Young Amande is bright and curious, but a povertystricken life on a houseboat with an eccentric grandmother doesnt seem like a good way for Amande to get the education she deserves. Then when the girls grandmother and her noaccount uncle are murdered, her prospects worsen. With only two known relatives, neither of whom is much more respectable than the dead uncle, Amande seems destined for neglect or worse. Soon, Faye and Joe find themselves among people fighting hard for Amandes pathetic inheritance: a raggedy houseboat, a few shares of stock, and a hurricanebattered island thats not even habitable. Pirateera silver coins are found and disappear. Shadowing it all is the fact that the murderer is still on the loose. But why should Faye be surprised by such shady events, here in these watery lands settled by the greatest pirates of them all? And the oil slick looms, because this country is still being plundered, after all these years.