Publisher's Synopsis
Quarryman's Daughter
Detective Megan Hall thought she was getting a fresh start in Chilhowee, Tennessee-a chance to rebuild her career after a corruption case in Atlanta went sideways. What she finds instead is a town where the past never stays buried, and some families have been keeping deadly secrets for nearly a century.
When beloved history professor Tyler Ellis is found murdered in the tunnels beneath downtown, the local police are quick to call it a robbery gone wrong. But Megan recognizes the signs of a cover-up when she sees one. Ellis had been researching the underground networks that honeycomb the city-tunnels originally built during during the Civil War and expanded during Prohibition by the powerful Price family, who made their fortune in marble quarries and bootleg whiskey.
As Megan digs deeper, she uncovers a chilling pattern: Ellis isn't the first person to die for asking the wrong questions about the Price empire. A carved marble signature left beside his body matches identical markers found at crime scenes stretching back to 1924, when a federal agent investigating bootlegging operations met the same fate in the same tunnels.
Teaming up with Dr. Ray Sturgill, Ellis's colleague, and investigative journalist Diana Gaines, Megan discovers that the Price family's legitimate development business is the perfect front for a sophisticated drug distribution network. The same tunnels that once moved illegal whiskey now channel prescription opioids throughout the Southeast. But when Ray's sixteen-year-old daughter Emma stumbles onto crucial evidence, she becomes the next target.
With the local police department compromised and powerful forces working to silence her investigation, Megan must navigate a web of corruption that reaches from the quarries to city hall. The Price family has survived and thrived for generations by eliminating threats before they become public. Now Megan faces the same choice that destroyed her Atlanta career: back down and let injustice win, or risk everything to expose a truth that some people will kill to protect.
In Chilhowee, the marble foundations run deep-but even the strongest stone can crack under enough pressure.
From the mountains of East Tennessee comes a gripping debut that combines the procedural depth of Michael Connelly with the atmospheric tension of Tana French. Luke Duvergey crafts a tale where family legacies cast long shadows, and the price of justice may be higher than anyone is willing to pay.
Perfect for fans of Louise Penny, John le Carré, and anyone who believes that some secrets are worth dying for-and some are worth killing to protect.
