Suspension of the Rules, by Don Stuart

Paperback: $15.95
ISBN: 978-1-60381-274-0
eBook: $5.99
Mystery

Suspension of the Rules, by Don Stuart

Politically active Yakima Valley dairy farmer, Fortis Henry, is found floating face down in his brand-new livestock waste lagoon. All six of the visitors present at the Henry Dairy on the day of the man’s death had intensely disliked him. All of them had powerful motives to see him dead. Any of them could have killed him. 

At the time, however, everyone, including the police, believes that the dairyman’s ghastly death was a horrible accident. The Yakima County Sheriff’s file on the matter is quickly closed.

Several weeks later, professional lobbyist Sandy Dalton becomes suspicious as new information comes to light—information that takes on significance given who was there that day. Those present included a farmer-activist whose big plans were threatened, a state Representative facing a closely-contested election, a Federal employee whose job was at risk, the legislative advocate for a powerful agriculture trade association whose authority was challenged, and another for a nonprofit environmental group whose behind-the-scenes finagling was catching up with her. And there was Dalton himself, whose recent contract to lobby for an association of conservation-minded farmers had been bitterly contested by the deceased dairyman.

Dalton’s quiet investigation is as subtle and clever as is his simultaneous balancing of the complex policy and political challenges entrusted to him by his clients in conservation farming and in commercial fisheries. The investigation draws upon his well-tuned natural intuition for reading people and a deep understanding of the complexities of legislative politics. When he finally grasps the hidden motivations that unmask the killer, he also unexpectedly discovers a yet deeper plot which places him and those close to him in peril—a plot that threatens very welfare of the people of the State of Washington.

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