The fourth Merry Folger nantucket mystery   After a trying case, detective Merry Folger begrudgingly agrees to take a leave from work to meet her fussy future in-laws in Greenwich, but it isn’t long before she is summoned back to Nantucket. The body of a 21-year-old was discovered in the frigid waters of the Sound in the days leading up to the annual Christmas celebration, and the death isn’t sitting well with Merry’s father, the local police chief, who fears the track marks on the victim’s arms may be indicative of a growing drug problem on the island. Feeling a constant need to live up to her father’s expectations, Merry rushes home to her fiancé, Peter’s, annoyance, only to find that heroin isn’t the only destructive force in Nantucket.   Soon after Merry arrives, she feels stonewalled by her father. If he was so desperate for her help, why won’t he share the details of the case with her? What is he hiding? For the first time, Merry fears she cannot trust her lifelong role model—her own father—let alone figure out why a young athlete and Harvard scholar ended up dead in the frigid, storm-churned Sound. Praise for Death in a Cold Hard Light   “An admirable, well-written series, with Folger evolving into an ever more complex character as love and loyalty collide with her professional pride and ethics.” —The Orlando Sentinel   “Mathews writes appealingly, making her characters human, fallible, and thoughtful and her story line always believable. Essential for all mystery collections.” —Library Journal   “Dark, taut, and unsettling . . . A nail-biting pace.” —Booklist   “Atmospheric . . . Action-filled.” —Publishers Weekly Merry Folger is more than ready for a romantic vacation with her fiance Peter when fate--and her police chief father--intervenes. Twenty-one-year-old Jay Santorski never should have drowned in the frigid waters off the Nantucket shore. What was the athlete, Harvard scholar, and part-time scalloper doing out alone in the storm-churned bay? At her father's insistence--and over Peter's objections--Merry returns to the island to investigate, only to be confronted at every turn by false leads and dead ends. And Police Chief John Folger is behind too many of these roadblocks. For the first time, Merry begins to feel she cannot trust her lifelong role model--her own father.... Francine Mathews was born in Binghamton, New York, the last of six girls. She attended Princeton and Stanford Universities, where she studied history, before going on to work as an intelligence analyst at the CIA. She wrote her first book in 1992 and left the Agency a year later. Since then, she has written twenty-five books, including four other novels in the Merry Folger series ( Death in the Off-Season, Death in Rough Water, Death in a Mood Indigo, and Death on Nantucket ) as well as the nationally bestselling Being a Jane Austen mystery series, which she writes under the penname Stephanie Barron. She lives and works in Denver, Colorado. Would she have used the word lousy to describe the past eight months? Probably not. What came to mind were words like painful, and bruising, and unremittingly bleak. Her giddy relief at having survived last April’s terrors had turned swiftly to remorse—for the lives she had failed to save—and anger at her own gullibility. Had she been less easy to impress, a killer might never have clouded her mind. Had she relied more on objective study, and less on gut instinct—which had urged her to suspect an innocent party—two people at least might still be alive today. Self-loathing consumed Merry whenever the subject of the Osborne investigation arose; for most of the past week, it had been forced down her throat. First by the prosecution, who should have been her allies, and then at the hands of the defense—a gaggle of lawyers baldly calculating how Meredith’s testimony might be turned to their client’s advantage. She wanted nothing so much as to put the debacle behind her, but some nights, staring wakefully into the darkness, she knew she never would. It was now of a piece with her successes and failures, written like a growth ring into the trunk of her life.      “You need and deserve a vacation,” Peter said, comprehending much that had filled her silence.      Before she could reply, Merry’s cellphone buzzed.       “Glad I got you,” John Folger said.       “Dad.” Merry turned her back on Peter. “Is everything okay?”       “Yes. Well, not exactly. How are things in Greenwich?”       “Fine. Great.” She tried to suppress impatience. “Is . . . Ralph okay?” Ralph Waldo Folger, Merry’s grandfather, was in his mid-eighties and his right hip was threatening to give out.       “Ralph’s just fine.”       “Well. Then we’re all fine.” She worried at the diamond solitaire on the third finger of her left hand, its band too loose past the knuckle, and waited for her father to come to the point.      Peter sprawled on the bed behind her. She was aware of him li