Agony Hill

In August 1965, Franklin Warren barely has time to settle into his new home in Bethany, VT, when he’s called to what could be a crime scene. The new state trooper doesn’t know the area yet, but his first case is at a remote farm on Agony Hill. Hugh Weber is dead in his half-burned barn. Is he a murder victim, or did the farmer copy a suicidal farmer who killed himself to protest the coming interstate in Vermont? No one has anything good to say about the victim, an angry man who wrote letters protesting Vietnam and changes in Vermont. Weber’s widow is left with four boys and a baby on the way, but she won’t say much. Warren’s mysterious neighbor Alice Bellows has ties to the intelligence community, and she seems to collect information, doling it out as appropriate. Then a second fire on Agony Hill throws Warren’s investigation into chaos, and piles on more secrets.