Keith Reiss

The Devil Lives in Georgia Keith Reiss

Within the bucolic hill country of North Georgia, investigative journalist Kent Griffin is murdered with diabolic finesse. He's left Los Angeles to take over a failing weekly newspaper in Cleveland, Georgia. Soon he discovers secrets that the old boy establishment led by Roy Jinks, the county sheriff, cannot afford to read in the White County News. Jinks' once local crime family slowly expands into a widespread network of corrupt officials and ruthless thugs allied with the Dixie Maffia from Atlanta and beyond. Kent's young reporter, Ashley Brook, and her fiancé, Jim Lipscomb, join several of their friends for a convivial party with Linda and Kent the night before his death. Despite official pronouncements, they all know there was no suicide. Ignoring tremendous peril, Ashley and Jim delve headlong into an unfamiliar spiderweb of corruption and raw power-and the seductive mystique of a tiny Appalachian enclave nestling in the footings of Ash Mountain. They press to uncover the truth and to complete Kent's solo crusade, accumulating evidence implicating the entrenched criminal consortium. And at last, they must consider how to approach the authorities-uncorrupted authorities. But who are they?