When Stephen MacKinnon left his career as a homicide detective with San Diego PD to become the Chief of Police of Talmine - a small and peaceful town in tidewater Virginia - he hoped he was leaving the stressful life of murder investigation behind. But then an unidentified dead woman dressed in a Confederate uniform is found at a Civil War reenactment battle held in the town's park. Aided by his wife, Victoria, a former SDPD crime analyst, MacKinnon begins an investigation that soon puts his job and then their lives in danger. Identifying the dead woman, MacKinnon learns she was a former employee of the Library of Congress and may have stolen Robert E. Lee's "Lost Order"-a message found by Union troops that led to an event that changed the course of the Civil War, the bloody battle of Antietam. Over one-hundred-and-forty years have passed since that battle, yet the Lost Order still seems to have an ability to generate death and suffering. The killer will stop at nothing to possess the valuable document - and MacKinnon must place himself in the line of fire to catch the murderer.
John J. Lamb is very happily married to Joyce, a retired police department fingerprint expert. They live with their three golden retrievers and six cats in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley.
