The slaughter of an entire plantation family outside of Richmond during the Civil War attracts the curiosity of unlikely detective duo of Narcissa Powers, a wealthy white widow, and Judah Daniel, a free African-American spiritualist. 17,500 first printing. Tour. Narcissa Powers, a rich white widow, and Judah Daniel, a free black herbalist, tackle another puzzling murder. They investigate the bizarre slaughter of a colonel's entire family near Richmond. A solid, satisfying Civil War-era historical. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. Its 1861. Col. John Berton, master of the plantation at Goochland, returns home one evening to find he's no longer master; his unresisting parents and wife have all been murdered, their throats cut, apparently by the servants who now lie dead around them. The Berton butler, in the hours before he himself dies, confesses that he'd waited over 50 years to kill Berton's father but stoutly denies murdering anyone else. Did the other slaves band together to execute the family they'd lived with for years? What was the ``angel trumpet'' another surviving slave spoke of as the signal for the slaughter? Is the massacre part of a larger slave rebellion plotted by King, the outlaw slave whose network of Loyal Brethren has so far been content to help slaves escape to the North? Or does it have its roots in Gabriel Prosser's abortive rebellion a generation earlier at nearby Henrico? While Berton's neighbor Dr. Cameron Archer skirmishes with his Confederate superiors over how to run the investigation, Archer's friend Narcissa Powers quietly takes control, overcoming her prejudice against James Cantrell, Berton's cousin and heir, and his malevolent wife in time to link the calamity to a legendary tale of ghosts at the Archer plantation. McMillan (Dead March, 1998) plots as boldly as you please, bringing war-torn Virginia alive; she also has a scary insight into people whose racial identity is up for grabs. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. Ann McMillan is the author of Dead March, the first in this series. Born in Georgia, she is also an award-winning nonfiction writer whose works include The Legend of Good Women . She lives in Richmond, Virginia.