Murder at the Jumpoff  is a novel with a powerful sense of place and the story of characters who challenge themselves to seek excitement, beauty, and fulfillment from undiscovered, treacherous mountain stream valleys and from those they love.

When Donald MacIntyre, an avid off-trail hiker, fails to return from a quest to bushwhack through difficult terrain up to the top of the Jumpoff, a dramatic cliff in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the good-natured backcountry ranger Hector Jones leads a search and rescue team into the remotest depths of the Greenbrier section of the park and discovers the body.  From the nature of MacIntyre’s injuries, it’s clear that he had fallen—or been pushed—from the top.

The job of investigating the suspicious death goes to Sally Connolly, a 31-year-old detective with the Sevier County, Tennessee, sheriff’s office. Looking to Hector’s expert knowledge of the terrain, Sally enlists his help in the investigation. She follows several leads. One reveals a feud between MacIntyre, who was a professor at U.T., and a rival professor at Emory. The second concerns the illegal digging of plants in the park. And a third pursues a complicated relationship with an older female hiking friend.

ISBN: 978-0-9829054-4-9. Price $14.95, March 2012. 5″ x 8″, Trade Paperback. 216pp.

http://www.canterburyhousepublishing.com / 828-297-7127