Rob Smith

For years, rumors of the "Marsh Girl" have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand.

Spenser is forced by loyalty into an alien world where violence is a way of lie and outsiders enter at a lethal risk. When Spenser's cohort Hawk is hired by the tenants of a gang-plagued Boston housing project known as "Double Deuce," he enlists his friend's aid. A friend's girl and her infant daughter have been gunned down. Though the act at first appears to be an accidental drive-by shooting, it soon becomes clear that it was premeditated murder.