Some men are too good to be true. At Havenmere, that isn't a compliment.

At Havenmere Country Club, the fairways are flawless, the funerals are catered, and everyone agrees it is a marvelous place to spend the years one has left. Eighty-five-year-old Sylvia Stern has spent fourteen winters here, long enough to know that the nicer a thing looks, the harder someone is working to keep you from looking closer.

Then Warren Deitch dies. Everyone adored Warren; charming, attentive, wonderful with the widows, the kind of man who handled your money without a single unpleasant question. On a Wednesday in January, his heart simply stopped, and Havenmere buried a marvelous man with a lovely service and a tear or two that were almost certainly sincere.

Everyone grieves. Sylvia takes notes.

Armed with the notebook her late husband called her murder book, a best friend who hears everything, and a detective who wishes she'd sit down, Sylvia starts pulling at the one question no one else will touch: how a man can be that marvelous and that dead. Havenmere reaches its verdict early and is almost never wrong. Sylvia would like a word before it sticks.

Welcome back to Havenmere. Barry has nothing to hide.

Death of a Marvelous Man is Book Two of the Havenmere Mysteries by W.A. Withrow.