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| Foolish Undertaking: Buryin' Barry Mystery | 
 enlarge | Author: Mark De Castrique
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy New: $10.18
You Save: $4.77 (32%)
New (19) Used (6) from $10.01
Avg. Customer Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 560591
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 264
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.2 x 0.8
ISBN: 1590583515
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9781590583517
ASIN: 1590583515
Publication Date: May 15, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
The night before a funeral that will thrust the mountain town of Gainesboro, North Carolina, into the national spotlight, the body is stolen from the embalming room and funeral director Barry Clayton is knocked unconscious. Ouch. How will Clayton & Clayton deal with the relatives of Y'Grok Eban, the Montagnard hero who aided US troops during the Vietnam War, or the U.S. Senator, three-star general, and famous Hollywood star en route to Y'Grok's service?
Barry's friend, Sheriff Tommy Lee Wadkins has a very personal interest in the missing Y'Grok--the Montagnard had saved his life. So does the Boston detective who also owes his life to Y'Grok and received a death-bed summons from the cancer-stricken old man: "Raven has come home." The three men pledge to crack Y'Grok's code, recover not just the body but a piece of a long-buried past, and deal with new death and betrayal. Is it a heroic or a foolish undertaking?
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| Customer Reviews:
strong investigative tale March 13, 2006
5 out of 10 found this review helpful
In Gainesboro, North Carolina, just before dying from cancer Montagnard expatriate Y'Grok Eban informs Boston cop Kevin Malone that the "Raven has come home" scaring the street tough police officer though he is not totally sure why. The brave Y'Grok saved many American lives during the Viet Nam war, but the exile never went home once he fled for the Carolina hills. Now a grand funeral befitting a genuine hero is planned that has caught the attention of the national media.
However, someone enters the Clayton & Clayton Funeral Home, knocking unconscious director Barry Clayton before apparently stealing the corpse of Y'Grok. Barry's friend local Sheriff Tommy Lee Watkins is upset for personal reasons because four decades ago Y'Grok saved his life when he served in Nam. Kevin, coming south for the funeral, joins forces with Tommy Lee and Barry an ex-cop to locate the body, learn the meaning of Y'Grok's last cryptic message and find out why something that happened forty years ago suddenly haunts those still living today over an ocean and a continent away.
Using a contemporary mystery, Mark de Castrique provides an intriguing look (through the memories of those gathering for the funeral) of the Viet Nam War in which the Montagnard served as loyal allies to the American troops. The search for the stolen corpse and the efforts to break Y'Grok's enigmatic last words turn into a strong investigative tale that spins into much more as the war still haunts these men while they each reflect back to try to define what the final words of their late brother in arms meant. FOOLISH UNDERTAKING is a fabulous thriller that grips the audience from the moment the corpse is purloined and never slows down until Raven comes home.
Harriet Klausner
A terrific book in a very good series. February 13, 2006
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
Berry is a terrific main character, a former copy-a patrolman, not a detective-with a strong relationship to his family and friends. I enjoyed the secondary characters but a weakness was that his girlfriend Susan seemed unsympathetic in this book, so you didn't quite understand the ending. The sense of place is well done, there's good tension and a couple twists along the way. I particularly liked learning about the Montagnards of Viet Nam, about whom I had never heard. This is a very good series, well written series and is perfect for those who like some action but nothing overly dark
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