Lying Wonders — Susan Rogers Cooper

TROUBLE IN PARADISE

Milt Kovak's string of bad luck with women is not something he likes to dwell upon. Especially now that the Prophesy County, Oklahoma sheriff is a happily married man and father of a toddler. But when ex-girlfriend Laura Marshall calls out of the blue to announce that her eighteen-year-old son Trent is missing and asks for help finding him, Milt realizes it can't be a good thing. The boy and his girlfriend, Amanda, had recently joined a religious retreat called the Holy Temple of the Seven Trumpets.

A ride out to the place--a million-dollar piece of land sold to the cult's leader, Brother Grigsby, for a dollar--leads to the discovery of Amanda's naked and very dead body in a remote area of the compound. While suspicion falls on Trent, Milt suspects the boy is hiding...or worse, dead. Stranger still, most of the syrupy and evasive reverend's flock are young, pregnant women. Milt puts to work his tried-and-true tactic of police detection: beating the bushes till something flies out--like a killer.