Linda Barnes: The Big Dig (USA 2019)

From the Publisher:
The Boston PI excavates her city's buried secrets in this "shrewd... smartly told" thriller by the Anthony Award-winning author (The New York Times).

Six-foot-tall, redheaded ex-cop and Boston-based private eye Carlotta Carlyle is "the genuine article: a straightforward, funny, thoroughly American mystery heroine" (New York Post).

Boston's largest urban renewal undertaking in modern history draws Carlotta into an undercover gig at the site. It comes at the request of a disgruntled hardhat who suspects the multibillion-dollar project has set off a groundswell of graft, kickbacks, and fraud. The case hasn't unearthed anything but dirt, so Carlotta is tempted into moonlighting on another: a Beacon Street socialite who's deeply concerned about her vanishing tenant, a dog groomer named Veronica James.

Since there's no possible way Veronica would run off without her beloved Norwegian wolfhound, Carlotta's suspicions are definitely aroused. And when her big-dig informant falls to his death in a highly dubious accident, Carlotta's torn between two disparate investigations: an unlikely kidnapping and a likely murder...

Linda Barnes: The Big Dig. A Carlotta Carlyle Mystery. Open Road Media, ISBN: 9781504057059 (March, 2019), eBook, 4.20 MB (ca. 354 p.), $7.99.

Linda Barnes: The Big Dig (USA 2003)

From the Publisher:
Carlotta Carlyle, the six-foot-tall redheaded private investigator, thought that working undercover searching out fraud on Boston's Big Dig would be a challenging assignment. After all, the Big Dig, the creation of a central artery tunnel running beneath crowded downtown Boston is an engineering marvel, the largest urban construction project in modern history, a fourteen-billion- dollar boondoggle in the eyes of protesters. Playing a mild-mannered secretary working out of a construction trailer is not quite the thrill ride she had in mind.

Carlotta decides to moonlight, taking on a missing person's case, but the search for Veronica James turns up one dead end after another. So do her fraud investigations on the Dig, and soon it looks like Carlotta has dug herself into one big hole. But then a break-in at Veronica's, coupled with the mysterious death of a construction worker on one of the sites, stirs up a storm, and soon enough Carlotta is in over her head in more ways than one...

Linda Barnes: The Big Dig. A Carlotta Carlyle Mystery. St. Martin's Minotaur, ISBN: 0312989695 (August, 2003), 352 p., $6.99.

Linda Barnes: The Big Dig (USA 2002)

From the Publisher:
Carlotta Carlyle, the six-foot-tall redheaded private investigator, thought that working undercover searching out fraud on Boston's Big Dig would be a challenging assignment. After all, the Big Dig, the creation of a central artery tunnel running beneath crowded downtown Boston is an engineering marvel, the largest urban construction project in modern history, a fourteen billion dollar boondoggle in the eyes of protesters. Playing a mild-mannered secretary working out of a construction trailer is not quite the thrill ride she had in mind.

Carlotta decides to moonlight, taking on a missing persons case, but the search for Veronica James turns up one dead end after another. So do her fraud investigations on the Dig, and soon it looks like Carlotta has dug herself one big hole. But then a break-in at Veronica's coupled with the mysterious death of a construction worker on one of the sites stirs up a storm, and soon enough Carlotta is in over her head in more ways than one.

Suspenseful, unpredictable, and vivid, The Big Dig is a startling return to form for one of the masters of the crime genre.

Linda Barnes: The Big Dig. A Carlotta Carlyle Mystery. St. Martin's Minotaur, ISBN: 0312282702 (October, 2002), 275 S., $23.95