Six Mile Creek

Six Mile Creek is the most engrossing crime novel I've read all year! This is a real story, with real characters. For me, that's as good as it gets!"-Steve Hamilton, Edgar Award-winning author of Dead Man RunningProsperity, North Carolina, used to be a red-clay farming community populated by descendants of the families who settled it over two centuries earlier. Then, developers from the metropolis in the next county discovered its rolling hills and winding streams, and decided to turn it into a suburb.Former Atlanta cop and local high school football star Judd Wheeler returned to Prosperity eight years ago to take a position of Chief of the new police department. With one tragic exception, it's been an uneventful job. Now, the body of a young illegal immigrant Mexican girl has been found on the banks of Six Mile Creek. For the first time since his return to Prosperity, Judd Wheeler finds himself with a murder on his hands. His investigation will place him in conflict with his closest childhood friend, ratchet up racial and class tensions in a community already stretched to the limit, and nearly tear his quiet little town to pieces. At the same time, coincidences he cannot ignore will stoke Chief Wheeler's nightmares of terrible events years earlier and compromise his ability to see the case clearly.In the small town of Prosperity, the line between desperation and salvation runs straight down the middle of Six Mile Creek!"Richard Helms, a multiple Shamus Award nominee and winner of the Derringer and Thriller Awards, has created an engrossing and timely story that will appeal to a wide range of readers!"-Barbara Bibel, ALA Booklist