Sylvia Nickels

Lament for a Broken Girl: A Cameron Locke Mystery Sylvia Nickels

Cameron Locke is a former abused wife who rebuilt her life in the small town of Wexler Bend, TN. After she was let go from her job as head of security at a local plant, she was told she was past the age for joining the police department. Her friend, Police Sergeant Shac Lane, encouraged her to become a private investigator instead. Dan Traynor, her PI mentor/trainer, died as he saved Cam's life when they were kidnapped by a mentally deranged woman. He left Cam his PI business and his home, which included his tech filled office.

Cam's best friend, Zoey, Security Chief for a hotel in Wexler Bend, calls Cam, to tell her that a childhood friend, Army Major Sahara Tawson, just returned from the Mideast, is coming to town. Cam joins Zoey at the airport to welcome the Major. A car follows Cam home from the airport. The driver is a Navy pilot who has come to Wexler Bend to hire Cam to find a beautiful African American woman with whom he spent a memorable weekend in Biloxi, MS the previous year.

Next day the twin to Major Tawson, granddaughters of Shac's superior, Detective Captain Dewitt Tawson, is found dead. After his granddaughter's apparent suicide, Cam is retained by the Captain to locate his missing former daughter-in-law, the twins' mother, perhaps in Mississippi. Cam flies to Biloxi, where a sexy police sergeant, and acquaintance of Shac, threatens to distract her from her double mission.

Cam is unsuccessful in finding the pilot's beautiful companion. She does locate Captain Tawson's daughter-in-law, only to have to tell her of her ex-husband's death from a fall in Wexler Bend. Cam returns home and discovers a clue indicating the death of Captain Tawson's son was murder. A few hours later she and Major Tawson are almost killed in Cam's office. Finally after she, Zoey, and Major Tawson's mother are poisoned, the identities of the murderers are revealed.

After yet another shocking death Cam, Shac, Zoey, and the Tawson family can begin to accept and live with the traumatic events which have happened.