The NIMBY Factor

Stephen Wilcox's second upstate New York mystery series, featuring rascal reporter Elias "Hack" Hackshaw, debuted last year to rave reviews. Now Hack is back - and in quite a mess - as he becomes embroiled in a real estate controversy that turns ugly indeed. Kirkville's NIMBY (Not-in-my-backyard) brigade is up in arms about the county's plans to install a landfill in a remote corner of their town; and, as always, Hack - chief opinionator for the Triton Advertiser and town gadfly - finds himself caught squarely in the middle. Wouldn't it be better, he reasons in an editorial, to accept the inevitable? Wouldn't it indeed, his loyal detractors shout back, when you yourself stand to make a tidy sum of cash out of the deal? In a generous gesture to hear both sides of the issue, Hack agrees to interview one of the landfill's opponents, Elton Venable. But when Hack arrives at the abandoned home that stands in the way of the landfill, he finds that not only those old walls had been left to rot. Elton Venable himself lies dead on the floor - leaving Hack the prime suspect. Hack is a fast talker - he's juggling suspicious cops, two or three doomed relationships, and newspaper deadlines, all at once - but The Nimby Factor promises to vex him more than anything that has come before.