Preacher Finds a Corpse by Gerald Everett Jones

The Evan Wycliff series has won nine awards, including both NYC Big Book Gold and Silver in Mystery for this book and the sequel Preacher Fakes a Miracle, winning the top two awards in that competition in the same year.

A lapsed divinity student who is fascinated by astrophysics finds his best friend shot dead in a cornfield. It looks like suicide. Having returned to his farm roots near Lake of the Ozarks, Evan works as a skip tracer for the local car dealer. He learns his friend was involved in a dispute over farmland ownership that goes back two centuries - complicated now by plans to make an old weapons facility a tourist attraction. First in a new Mystery-Thriller series.

"With its roots firmly grounded in an exceptional sense of place and purpose, Jones has created a murder mystery that lingers in the mind long after events have built to an unexpected crescendo. Murder mystery fans will find it more than a cut above the ordinary." - D. Donovan, Donovan's Bookshelf