The Dead Season, The Dead Season

It’s the end of the tourist season in The Hamptons, and things quiet down—until prominent landowner Berle Avery is found dead at The Ocean Club Spa. His massage therapist is convinced he was murdered and asks local P.I. Anna Bartel for help. Anna accepts the case, even though the police, the coroner and Avery’s own doctor say there’s no evidence of foul play. Meanwhile, Special Agent Mark Oberlin has been spending time in the pine barrens of Montauk, where he’s hidden Nardo, his informant and key witness in a drug racketeering case. What Oberlin doesn’t know is that Jim Ryan, a DEA agent who shares Oberlin’s FBI office, is on the Cartel’s payroll. His assignment is to track Nardo down and make sure he never testifies. Nardo’s sudden decision to relocate brings them all together. Unaware of the danger he’s in Nardo abandons his bare-bones digs at Phil’s Piney Acres for his ex-wife’s nearby country house. Anna is convinced there’s a link between his disappearance and Avery’s death. Her sleuthing takes her from Montauk’s beachfront mansions and resorts, to the sprawling vineyards of the North Fork, but as she closes in on her murder suspects, Nardo manages to stay one step ahead of her, Oberlin, and the increasingly desperate Agent Jim Ryan—who now has Anna in his sights as well. What began as a game of cat and mouse, is now a matter of life and death.