Garotte, The

When Carmel McAlistair sees what appears to be a garroting occur during a local Newfoundland festival, she doesn’t believe her own eyes. Did a blond woman actually fling a cord around a man’s neck and strangle him to death? It was late at night and in a field at a distance—and the twosome Carmel saw were in the middle of an unruly crowd of masked revelers. It was probably her eyes playing a trick on her, she thinks. That is, until the next morning when she revisits the scene and discovers the man’s body.

The dead man turns out to be a local Reverend—minister to a strange fringe congregation. Possible motives quickly pile up. Carmel, who is newly arrived home from a long working trip, just wants to settle in her little cabin home for the Christmas holidays, but the gruesome crime keeps rearing its ugly head––and soon another cleric is found murdered in the same horrifying way. Maybe Carmel’s new tenant with his amazing computer program that can determine a killer from various crime scene data will reveal the murderer before another minister is strangled. Or maybe Carmel herself can aid the local investigator to track down this murderer.