Muddy the Water
When a popular fishing captain is murdered on his own trawler, everyone in Haversport, Massachusetts, knows the culprit is a young deckhand named Ben Broome, including Detective Lillian Grimes. But Ben has discovered the perfect hiding place: as a reporter writing for the tiny Coastal Packet, a newspaper down in South Carolina.
When a half-eaten body washes in, it becomes the biggest story in the paper’s history and brings cunning, charismatic Ben immediate success. But it also leads Grimes closer to the truth. She soon teams up with hungry rival reporter Florence Park to hunt Ben down before he can charm—or kill—his way to freedom.
Shown from three perspectives, killer, detective, and reporter, Muddy the Water brings readers inside the newsroom of a struggling small newspaper on the bucolic South Carolina coast and speaks to the concept of identity—and whether anyone ever shows their true self.
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Jessica Barrows Beebe is a former journalist, editor, and national TV news producer. She helped produce a daily live broadcast covering campaign politics and news out of the White House, Congress, and Supreme Court. Most recently, she fundraised for a Bay Area educational nonprofit. She has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia. Jessica has three children and her happy place is with her husband in Midcoast Maine in summer. Her brother thinks he’s the funny one, but clearly he’s wrong.