Nobody Talks in Egypt Hollow

Some places keep their secrets. Egypt Hollow keeps them buried.Seven-year-old Bobby Ray Bollard walked the half-mile path to his best friend’s house in Egypt Hollow, North Carolina, like he had a hundred times before. It was an October evening, and he carried a little yellow flashlight. He promised to stay on the path. He never made it to the sleepover.By morning, the whole hollow is searching the woods. By afternoon, what they find changes Egypt Hollow forever.Roy Reynolds is the best investigator in the Surry County Sheriff’s Office. He has worked for Sheriff Gig Hollister for sixteen years, and he knows nearly everyone in the hollow. He believes that will be enough to solve the case. It is not. The FBI sends Special Agent Janice Meeker from Charlotte, a sharp outsider who has never been south of Washington, D.C. She is not welcome in the hollow, and she knows it.The investigation turns first toward Bobby Ray’s mother, Marybeth, whose troubled past left behind enemies, threats, and debts she believed were over. Then the suspects multiply: a strange young man who walks the woods at night, a respected preacher with secrets, a parolee who promised revenge, and a former deputy with reasons to keep quiet. Every lead exposes another piece of a community built on loyalty, fear, and silence.As the weeks pass and the leaves fall, something grows between Roy and Janice that neither of them planned. But when the evidence begins pointing in a direction Roy cannot bear to look, their trust will be tested in ways neither is ready for.Watching it all from his barber chair on Main Street in Mount Airy is sixty-eight-year-old Earl Hollins. For forty years, men have told Earl what they would not tell their wives, their preachers, or the law. Now those quiet conversations may hold the key to a murder.Nobody Talks in Egypt Hollow is an Appalachian murder mystery about a boy who kept his promise, a hollow that keeps its secrets, and a barber who finally decides to tell.Bobby Ray kept his promise. He stayed on the path.Somebody else was waiting there.