Silence the Dead

A body is exhumed—and a long-unsolved murder grows even more mysterious—in this "powerful" crime thriller set in small-town Illinois ( Booklist).   Seventeen-year-old Betty Jo Dean was abducted and murdered thirty years ago. It took two days to find her body. She was found, fully dressed apart from her slacks, beneath a gnarled, stunted tree, shot in the back of the head. No one was ever charged in her death.   Now, following an appeal from one of his constituents, Mayor Mac Bassett has called for the case to be reopened. But when the body is exhumed, it is revealed that the skull, found loose in the coffin, does not belong to Betty Jo.   Mac is determined to solve a cold case that's becoming increasingly confounding. But no one in the small town of Grand Point is talking. Sheriffs, doctors, medical examiners: everyone seems to be warning Mac off. And then people start dying . . .