Margot Sterling has survived thirty years of federal forensic work, two Septembers in a Sarasota retirement community, and the particular quiet of a life she's still learning to call her own. She knows what competence looks like when it's doing a job. She knows what it looks like when it's hiding something else.
She has been watching Pelican Point Estates' new activities director since January. Miriam Cross is forty-eight, efficient, and warm in the specific way of a person who has studied what warmth produces and applies it accordingly. She maintains the emergency protocols, the medical records, the supply logs. She is, by every measurable standard, excellent at her job.
Margot has decided she has no opinion of her.
This is, in retrospect, the first error.
When Category 3 Hurricane Iris makes landfall overnight, Pelican Point seals: a hundred and twelve residents, eighteen staff, no cell signal, no law enforcement. And in the dark of the storm's second band, Victor Ashby - sixty-seven, retired State Department diplomat, Type 1 diabetic - is found on the Commons kitchen floor.
The official assessment: a medical episode, consistent with his known condition.
Margot's assessment: the supply closet latch was not fully engaged. The sign-out log has a missing entry. And in forty-seven pages of storm documentation maintained with meticulous care, there is a gap of one hour and fourteen minutes that has not been adequately explained.
No outside help is coming. The roads won't reopen until morning. Miriam Cross is still in the building - cooperative, organized, and prepared for every question before it arrives.
The investigation belongs to Margot alone: built from supply logs, a medical file, a neighbor's 1 a.m. observation, and thirty years of finding what someone didn't want found. She has one day. After that, a very organized woman will disappear into her next identity, and Victor Ashby will have died of a medical episode, consistent with his known condition.
Margot intends to close the case before the roads open.
Force Majeure is the sixth novel in The Pelican Point Mysteries, featuring Margot alongside returning favorites Hank Ortiz, Delia Washington, Annabeth Cleary, Roy Tavares, and FDLE Detective Lin Alvarez. The mystery is complete as a standalone - but readers of the series will recognize what it costs, and what it means, to solve a murder inside the place you've finally decided to call home.
Perfect for fans of The Thursday Murder Club, Killers of a Certain Age, and mysteries that trust their readers to keep up.
