When Barry Clayton’s father developed Alzheimer’s, Barry gave up his career in law enforcement to return to the North Carolina mountain town of Gainesboro and run the family’s funeral home. But even a small town in the Appalachians is not immune to crime.

At a summer street dance, Barry’s friend Sheriff Tommy Lee Wadkins is gunned down by an old man distraught at the death of his wife. To the dismay of Deputy Reece Hutchins, hospitalized Tommy Lee appoints Barry as the deputy in charge of the investigation. Who was the old man stalking? Why was a young woman who was wounded at the scene traveling with the intended victim?

What at first appears to be a case of a mentally unstable summer tourist quickly develops into a tangled web of deceit stretching from western North Carolina to the Florida coast. Someone is preying upon senior citizens....

Barry realizes Deputy Hutchins is undercutting his investigation, but as potential witnesses and informants begin to die under mysterious circumstances, Barry confronts a conspiracy that runs so deep he no longer knows who to trust. One false step, one betrayal, will make this case Buryin’ Barry’s final undertaking.

Reviews

"In this colorful, engrossing fourth adventure for funeral home owner and former cop Barry Clayton (after 2006's Foolish Undertaking ), an ordinary afternoon in Gainesboro, N.C., is interrupted when an elderly man visiting from Florida opens fire on Main Street. The shooter, Mitch Kowalski, hits a handful of people, including sheriff Tommy Lee Wadkins, who, from his hospital bed, asks Clayton to take over the investigation. Clayton suspects the recent death of Kowalski's octogenarian wife had something to do with his inexplicable shooting spree. When Clayton heads to the Sunshine State to dig a little deeper into Kowalski's past, he learns that Kowalski's late wife had been taking medicine that hadn't been prescribed to her. More people will die before Clayton gets to the bottom of a nefarious medical scam. De Castrique has married the complexity and fast pace of a police procedural with the folksy setting and lovable characters of a cozy. (Apr.)" --Publishers Weekly

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"A sleuthing small-town North Carolina undertaker solves another many-layered mystery.

The Friday Night Street Stomp, Gainesboro's weekly public party with music, is brutally disrupted by a shooting. A seemingly irrational old man shouts, "Lincoln! . . . This is for Lucy," then whips out a pistol and shoots at an unidentified middle-aged target. The presumed Lincoln pulls an unidentified young woman into the shooter's path, and she takes a bullet, as does Cindy Todd, the daughter of local caf-owner Helen. Sheriff Tommy Lee is able to shoot the assailant dead, but not before being seriously wounded himself. When he's hospitalized, funeral director/narrator/sometime sleuth Barry Clayton (Foolish Undertaking, 2006, etc.) is pressed into service. Barry has moved from Charlotte to the quiet Appalachian town to tend to his Alzheimer's-afflicted father, who provides one of several competing subplots. The main event, though, is clearly the bizarre shooting, which provides many questions: Who was Lincoln? Who was the shooter? Who was the girl? When she dies, the challenge of the case doubles. Barry finds himself temporarily returning to his roots as a Charlotte cop, dealing with young drug addicts and putting together an undercover operation.

Readers may be hard-pressed to keep the tangle of narrative threads straight, but Barry is an amiable guide to untangling them, and a reliable source of many provocative tidbits about embalming." --Kirkus Reviews

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"The fourth entry in the Undertaking series, featuring North Carolina undertaker Barry Clayton, offers further evidence that funeral parlors provide rich material for offbeat fiction (Tim Cockey also mines this vein in his Hitch Sewell series). When Barry’s friend, Sheriff Tommy Lee Watkins, is murdered, Barry is put in charge of the investigation, to the consternation of Watkins’ deputy, Reece Hutchins. Barry uncovers a far-reaching fraud scheme, but his biggest problem may be Deputy Hutchins, who is doing every nasty thing he can to ensure that Barry doesn’t solve the case. Strong characters and engaging setting add up to a thoroughly enjoyable yarn." --Booklist