Murder@Maggody.Com Hardcover - 2000

From the publisher

Lowbrow town. High-tech fun.

It seems the new high school computer lab has the God-fearing citizens of Maggody riled up. What better temptation for folks to log on and download pornography off the Internet? Why, the lab is nothing more than the Devil's high tech workshop!

So goes the online drama in the sleepy town of Maggody, Arkansas, population 755. In the latest installment in this series by Joan Hess, beleaguered chief of police Arly Hanks has a lot on her mind that she wishes she hadn't. First of all, there's the controversy raised by Mayor Jim Bob Buchanon over having a computer lab. And if that wasn't enough, two shady individuals, Lazarus and Seth, move into the Pot O' Gold trailer park and raise a ruckus among its residents by shooting beer bottles with rifles and slithering around the SuperSaver town grocery store. And then there's seventeen-year-old Gwynnie Packwood, an unmarried mother of a two-year-old son. Her unfortunate circumstances extend to living with her uncle and aunt, Daniel and Leona Holliflecker -- not the most compassionate people on the planet -- until she can pull herself up on her own two feet. Thank goodness for busybody Ruby Bee, who gives her a part-time job at the bar and grill while she takes computer courses at night. Heaven help her that she's taken to the new computer instructor, Justin Bailey, who just moved into the Pot O' Gold with his wife, Chapel, causing all kinds of rumors to break loose.

And when a body turns up in an abandoned shack, it will take all of Arly's low-tech resourcefulness to quiet down the good folks of Maggody and pull the plug on the murderer.