DEATH on HOG ISLAND

Of the more than 400 barrier islands along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, few are large enough to be inhabitable. In the early 1970s, while clearing an area for a new casino and resort on a currently-uninhabited island, workers uncover a human skeleton. Slade Dollar, a detective from the mainland town of Lewiston decides it's a job for the State Crime lab. After the forensic experts remove most of the bones, Dollar finds an odd-looking shoe. When a second skeleton and then a third are unearthed, one with a bullet hole, the other buried under a collapsed barn wall, the island was declared a crime scene. Two more bodies are found as his investigation evolves. As Dollar digs into the island's history and its original recluse hog farmers, he learns that a radio station had purchased the island in the late 1930s and renamed it Paradise. Each week the station game show had awarded a week vacation on the island to each of five lucky newlywed couples. Dollar sets out to determine the names of the five couples and those of the skeletons who were on the island during a 1938 tropical storm that had devastated the islands and mainland towns. His trek involves an odd running shoe, a passionate librarian, a hermit, evidence of espionage, a New York stripper, the scion of a Sicilian weapons manufacturer, an author of mystery novels and a bacchanalia.