An ever-fixed mark

O.C. Strunk’s previous novel, Three-Two Count, featured protagonist Professor Matthew Glass living in a remote cabin in northeast Maine, trying to recover from the loss of his wife and daughter. This sequel finds the same Dr. Glass attempting to establish a business in southeastern North Carolina in the small town of Calabash. Making the transition as a Yankee into a small Southern town is no easy matter, but he finds one helpful, generous, and wise friend—eighty-year-old Christopher Fry. Fry is a retired hospital administrator, but is found dead at his home on the Intracoastal Waterway—an accident by all accounts. Fry’s estranged daughter, however, has her doubts about her father’s death, and she enlists the help of Matthew. In his investigation—an investigation that at times is reluctant and tentative—he uncovers more than he had bargained for, including threats to himself and to his adopted daughter, Micki Kim. He learns, however, that authentic friendship and loyalty can overcome evil even when the object of one’s friendship and loyalty is no longer alive.