Bernice Gottlieb

The House in the Cul-De-Sac Bernice Gottlieb

Chuck Ellison has gone missing! Theres no sign of him anywhere, and the police are baffled and fearful of ending up with a cold case. Maggie Mitty, a realtor in the upscale village of Hudson Hills, seems to know more about his whereabouts than anyone else, and she quickly becomes a suspect in his disappearance because of it. George MacDuffie, the owner of a historical house, and his sister Bernadette, who just emigrated from Scotland to take care of her aging older brother, are Maggies next-door neighbors, and they have just hired a mysterious young man named Tavis Connor from Edinburgh to be the caretaker of their property. Everyone seems to have a motive for murder! Maggie, a history buff, is obsessed with the MacDuffies mansion because it was once a station in the Underground Railroad and had a tunnel that helped slaves take refuge in while waiting for ships to take them to Canada and to freedom. She offers to help Chief Betsy, the new police chief in Hudson Hills, and shares the first important clue in the investigation with her. The suspense is riveting, and the book is hard to put down until Chuck is finally found.