My name is Meg Daniels, and I would have to say that, at this point, I am a full-time amateur sleuth.

I do work sometimes. I mean at a job. A real job. I just spent several years serving as a concierge to celebrity guests at a Bahamian resort. That was a real job although it did come with a beach front shanty—I mean cottage—and hotel restaurant access that made it feel more like a dream. When Hurricane Frieda drove the ocean waters in to destroy our home and most of our possessions, we took the event as a sign from the universe to move on.

The other person in the “we” situation is my boyfriend, excuse me, my fiancé, Andy Beck. A former Private Investigator, he worked as head of Security for the resort while I labored at the concierge desk. Two decades after he dropped out, he decided he wanted to return to college. Since we had been pretty much living for free for a few years, we had the money to leave our jobs behind and head back to the Jersey Shore.

We found a little cottage in the Pine Barrens but we had barely pulled into the driveway before a housesitting job fell into our laps and we moved to a beachfront mansion in Avalon. Andy would commute to classes at Stockton University and I . . . well, I would sit on the couch and catch up on my reading and my streaming. At least, that was what I hoped to do. That plan went off track when, during the night we arrived, two strangers appeared in the thicket covering the dunes surrounding our house.

The twosome turned out to be mother and daughter. The mother, suffering from dementia, was trying to find her way back to her former home and to the father who abandoned her in 1977. I didn’t tell the unexpected visitors that I had experience in discovering the fates of people long-missing, but that pesky thing called the Internet did. Abby, the daughter, reappeared the next day and enlisted my help in finding her grandfather. I was initially reluctant but the house was largely glass and I couldn’t hide from her. Abby is not the type to be put off.

I told myself that having a project did me good. I needed to get out of the house. I mean, how healthy is it to sit and be soothed by the panoramic view of the ocean all day? A girl could get spoiled.

So, every morning, I roll out of bed and set out to track down someone who knew Ken Patterson in the 1970s. Sometimes with Abby in tow. Sometimes alone if I can get out of the house fast enough.

Abby believes that I am looking for a living person, but I’ve begun to suspect I will never find her grandfather, Ken Patterson, alive. I worry that what I might find is a killer. But, I can’t back out. Not as long as Abby can find me.

I complain but I must admit I love the idea of finding resolutions for families with questions unanswered for forty, even fifty years. I’ve talked about finding meaningful work and I think this is it. Only problem? I am an amateur sleuth. Amateurs can’t get paid. But I’ll worry about that after I find out what happened to Ken Patterson.

Strangers in the Avalon Dunes, A Meg Daniels Mystery #6
Release: January 2023
Format: Print (Jan 14), Digital (Jan 17)
Purchase Link

After the turbulence of her last adventure, Meg Daniels swears she never wants to help someone find a lost loved one ever again. She settles into a lazy routine in an upscale home in the high dunes of Avalon, New Jersey, that is owned by a friend who has asked her and her fiancé, Andy Beck, to housesit for several months.

However, Meg finds she can’t outrun her reputation. When a young woman asks Meg to find her long-lost grandfather, Ken Patterson, Meg just can’t say no. In 1977, Ken, a wealthy attorney, decided he was born too soon. He missed the British Invasion, the Summer of Love, and Woodstock. He may have missed the Sixties, but he wasn’t going to miss the Seventies. So, he simply disappeared, leaving behind his wife and daughter. After more than 40 years have gone by, can Meg actually find him? Ken’s daughter has been diagnosed with early-onset dementia and wants to reunite with the father she hasn’t seen in four decades, so time is of the essence.

Meg soon becomes convinced she’s investigating a murder. Had Ken really executed a carefully planned escape from the life he no longer wanted? Meg is not so sure. His abandoned wife claims she has never given up on him, but Meg concludes that not everyone―including his wife―was sad to see him go.

As Meg begins to make some progress on the case, it becomes obvious that someone really doesn’t want Meg nosing around. Is it the killer or simply a man who doesn’t want to be found?

About the author
Jane Kelly is a native of Philadelphia, close to the Jersey Shore settings of the Meg Daniels mysteries available from Plexus Publishing. She earned an MS in Information Studies from Drexel University and returned to school as an extremely mature student for an MPhil in Popular Literature from Trinity College, University of Dublin. She is a past-president of the Delaware Valley Chapter of Sisters in Crime and has served on the board of the New York Chapter of Mystery Writers of America. Jane is also the author of the Widow Lady Mysteries and the Writing in Time Mysteries available via Amazon. Her fifth Meg Daniels Mystery won an Independent Publisher Book Award silver metal for mid-Atlantic fiction. Her next Meg Daniels novel, Strangers in the Avalon Dunes, will be available on January 17, 2023.

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