Customer Reviews

Final Undertaking (Large Print Edition): Buryin' Barry Mystery

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First Sentence: "The banjo's bigger than the picker." Susan laughed and set up her folding chair at the edge of the curb.

Ex-policeman Barry Clayton gave up his badge and moved back to a small town in North Carolina to take over the running of the family funeral home from his Alzheimer stricken father. At the first summer street dance, an old man in a wheelchair suddenly pulls a gun and shoots Barry's girlfriend Susan, his friend the Sheriff Tommy Lee and a young woman who was thrown in the gunman's path by a man running to get away. When the girl dies and with Tommy Lee injured after killing the old man, Barry is deputized to find out who was the girl and why the old man wanted her partner dead.

\Sometimes an author has a single book which becomes pivotal in the growth of a series. I believe this is such a book. de Castrique enables the reader to become part of this town and it's residents; the role faith plays in some of their lives and a view of those who run family-owned funeral homes in a small town. Barry is a wonderful character who, in a climatic point, must choose between his job and his family. The book is wonderfully and emotionally written but never loses sight of it being an exciting, suspenseful mystery as well. If you've not yet discovered this series; do start at the beginning. You are in for a real treat.

Buryin' Barry Clayton, a former cop who returned to his Appalachian mountain town of Gainesboro, NC, to help with the family funeral home when Alzheimer's struck his father, is enjoying an outdoor summer concert with his girlfriend, Dr. Susan Miller, when gunfire erupts.

The intended victim pushes his female companion into the elderly gunman and the young woman and a bystander are wounded before Sheriff Tommy Lee Wadkins kills the man and is seriously hurt in the process. Hospitalized but undaunted, Tommy Lee appoints Clayton as his deputy in charge of the case, annoying Reece Hutchins, his officious official deputy.

Following the gunman's trail to Florida where the old man's octogenarian wife died of an Oxycontin overdose, Clayton suspects a drug connection. With help from his new intern Fletcher Shaw, and guidance from Tommy Lee, Clayton soon manages to involve several police departments, the feds and even some crafty bureaucrats in a tangle where even friends and neighbors are suspect.

This fourth outing (after "Foolish Undertaking") continues to develop Clayton as a smart and likable sleuth, with strong roots and solid loyalties. The family subplots and small-town setting contribute to the storyline as well as strengthening character.

Suspenseful and well paced, this series should appeal to both procedural and cozy readers.

Mark deCastrique's FINAL UNDERTAKING provides the fourth in the Undertaking series, but requires little prior familiarity with other titles to prove easily accessible and enjoyable. This Barry Clayton mystery tells of a sheriff friend gunned down by an old man at a summer street dance, making Barry a sudden appointed stand-in who finds himself facing a stalker and a tangled web of cross-country intrigue.

Once again, thoroughly entertained ... lots of twists and turns and never bored with the plot line and action. Well worth picking up.

In Gainesboro, North Carolina, an elderly distraught Floridian Mitch Kowalski grieving the loss of his wife Lucy, fires at people on Main Street before local Sheriff Tommy Lee Watkins kills him. However Tommy Lee was one of the three people shot by the culprit so is unable to lead the official investigation. However ignoring protocol he asks former law enforcement official Barry Clayton to head the inquiry instead of his Deputy Reece Hutchins as experience is key. Barry, who runs Clayton and Clayton funeral home since his father began visibly suffering from Alzheimer's, reluctantly agrees.

Being a witness to the shootings, Barry realizes a fiftyish paunchy white male was the target, but he escaped when he pushed a woman in front of him. To learn more about the motive Barry heads to Florida to understand why Kowalski targeted the guy who got away. As he uncovers information involving Medicare fraud and misuse of prescription drugs including Lucy's use of a non-prescribed medicine, Barry realizes that back in Appalachia, an outraged Reece is sabotaging his case. Still he digs up dirt on a conspiracy that ties his home state to the not so sunny Sunshine state as some in the medical profession use and abuse senior citizens for exorbitant illegal profit.

In his fourth "Undertaking", Barry Clayton is at his best as he returns to his investigative roots. The murder mystery that he looks into turns into something so much greater as avarice leads to predators harming and even "killing" older Americans. Mark de Castrique provides a delightful conspiracy thriller that with what the IG has found in Iraq with soldiers placed at risk due to fraud, waste, and abuse makes this deep story line seem plausible and real.

Harriet Klausner