Streetcars in Denver run late. Rarely on the money. So, I’ve been up since six. Early starts give me a sharp edge on ruthless days, and this day promises to be cutthroat. First, I’m riding out to the high-brow seminary west of town. For a place purporting to be of God, it might have some unholy shenanigans going on under the clerical cloth.

But let me be generous. Perhaps one or two scalawags are the only real troublemakers at such a would-be pious school. So, don’t be too quick to judge. That’s what young pastor Jack Blake would tell me, and when he speaks, I confess I will listen. We’re an item, as some might say, so I pay close attention to what he concludes about my crime cases, even if he’s often right while being wrong with his unrepentant teasing. We’re both young and in our twenties in 1924. Thus, we struggle at times to know exactly who we are, especially to each other—especially amid the danger of Klan-run Colorado. So, while I’m fighting to solve a case, he’s fighting to tell me why to leave it alone. Fireworks erupt, indeed.

Today, however, my mind is battling another matter. What will I discover at the seminary? Will they let me in the door? For a young Black amateur detective like me, in a state rippling with Klan menace, crime-fighting forays get me into hot water. That could happen today, so I’ve sent up a few humble prayers, pleading for entry onto a scandalous campus and then for my safe return back home.

Yet the day won’t end there. Against my better judgment, I’ve made plans to question Denver’s most ambitious Negro socialite, Miss Valerie Valentine, a would-be pillar of my Five Points Denver church. Her upturned nose is always frowning down on me, dismissive of my homespun clothes, second-hand shoes, and untamed curls, among other high-society sins. She considers detective work lowly labor, especially for a formally educated, young Black female theologian like me. Her view on my life is ironic. She’s a key suspect in my present case. During a garden party of a rich Denver political fixer, a young pretty stranger was found dead—a deep red rose clutched in her dainty, cooling hand.

Miss Socialite Valerie, a rose-grower, was at the fete. Today, however, when we meet, she’ll give me what for, plus a cold shoulder, acting innocent and appalled to be suspected. But later tonight, to recover, I’ll see the pastor—my young man, yes—and we’ll huddle in the midnight dark on my rundown cabin porch and watch the stars. A sizzling comet will startle us, its beauty fiery and surprising. But my life is like that too, and not just today. On all days, something bright happens until the world tries to burn it down. So, I fight back—solving crimes, battling for justice, angling to learn how to fall in love. What mysteries these things are. That’s perhaps why I can’t stop trying to solve it all.

Truth Be Told, An Annalee Spain Mystery Book #3
Genre: Historical Mystery
Release: June 2024
Format: Print, Digital, Audio
Purchase Link

Denver’s newest detective. A garden’s deadly secrets.

On a lovely June night in 1924, amateur detective Annalee Spain is mingling bravely at a high-class political fundraiser in the lush backyard garden of famed political fixer Cooper Coates, one of the wealthiest men in Denver’s Black neighborhood of Five Points. When Coates’s young daughter discovers a pretty stranger dead in her father’s garden shed, Annalee is thrust onto the baffling new case just as she’s reeling from another recent discovery—a handwritten letter, found buried in her own garden, that reveals the identity of her mother.

Not ready to face the truth about her hidden past, Annalee throws herself into solving the mystery of the young woman’s demise. With the help of her pastor boyfriend Jack Blake, her orphaned buddy Eddie, and her trustworthy church friends, Annalee follows the clues to three seemingly disconnected settings—a traveling carnival set up downtown, a Black civic club, and a prestigious white seminary on the outskirts of Denver. Intriguing advice also comes from a famous, real-life Denver visitor. But is Annalee on the right track or just running in circles, fleeing from conflicts racing in her heart?

In a taut, heart-gripping narrative driven by secrets, romance, and lies, Annalee must unravel a case with higher stakes than she imagined—one where answers about a lovely woman’s death point to truths and tensions still throbbing today.

Meet the author
Patricia Raybon, a Denver newspaper journalist who turned to historical fiction, authors devotional writing for Our Daily Bread and writes the Annalee Spain Mystery series set in Colorado’s dangerous 1920s Klan era. The novels have won the Christy Award for First Novel and Christianity Today’s Book Award for Fiction, with the debut picked by Parade Magazine for Fall 2021 “Mysteries We Love,” PBS on Masterpiece’s “Best Mysteries of 2021: As Recommended by Best Selling Authors,” and BookBub’s “16 Best Historical Mysteries of 2021.” Truth Be Told, the third installment, released on June 11.