When Marta Kowalski is discovered beneath the Farmington River Bridge, the police write off her death as a suicide. A simple cleaning woman, Marta faithfully attended Mass and sometimes went gambling. She had no enemies, let alone friends. How could it be murder? Yet her niece is convinced of foul play. She hires Amerasian Rick Van Lam, the only investigator she knows. He had never really cared for Marta. Yes, she'd cleaned his place, but she was a little too nosy and she'd fought with a local gardener. Aided by Hank Nguyen and Hank's wise grandmother, Rick soon finds himself mired in affluent Farmington's parochial pettiness and scandal. Digging deeper, he unearths rivalries, jealousies, and viciousness-and realizes that Marta was no unassuming housekeeper. Any number of townsfolk had reason to shove her off that bridge-one of them mind-blowing. Ed Ifkovic taught literature and creative writing at a community college in Connecticut for over three decades, and now devotes himself to writing fiction. Under the pseudonym Andrew Lanh, he published the novel Caught Dead, dealing with the Vietnamese community in Hartford. Return to Dust is the second in this series.