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North Carolina writer Mark de Castrique’s new thriller opens at a barbecue joint in Asheville. Then, it races to the old Carl Sandburg goat farm in Flat Rock, now a national park. One-legged private investigator Sam Blackman hustles up the Glassy Mountain trail as well as he can. A prosthesis digs painfully into his stump.

Thirty yards from the north side overlook, he hears a woman scream, “No!” Bending over the dying UNC-Asheville historian, he hears her whisper, “Wendy. It’s the verses. Sandburg’s verses.”

The historian, Janice Wainwright, looks as if she has been bashed in the head. A small backpack she wore has disappeared. Wendy is her daughter.

“The Sandburg Connection” (Poisoned Pen Press: Scottsdale, Ariz.; 2011, 290 pages, hardcover, $24.95) is, as a Publishers Weekly blurb says, a blend of history and mystery. Actually, the blurb says “marvelous,” but I wouldn’t go that far. I don’t have a quarrel with the history; it’s the mystery that bothers me.

The barbecue place? The book calls it “Luella’s Barbecue.” But the restaurant at 501 Merrimon Avenue – the street is mentioned in the book – is “Luella’s Bar-B-Cue.” A small detail, yes, but private investigators pay attention to detail. Authors of private investigator books should, too.

Blackman and his partner had been hired by an insurance company to spy on the historian. Her specialty is the Civil War.

She had filed a malpractice suit against a spinal surgeon. She alleged he had botched her back surgery. The insurance company wants to know if she really does have a bad back. Is she in constant pain as her lawsuit claims? A lot of money is at stake.

The private investigators are a story line in themselves. He’s a veteran of the Iraq war, where he got his leg blown off. His credentials as a private detective come from his experience in the Army as a chief warrant officer in the Criminal Investigation Command.

The much younger Nakayla Robertson is practical, methodical, computer savvy and a good shot. She keeps the office on an even keel as best she can. She’s African American. He’s white. They’re lovers.

The dialog, generally, is crisp in a detective story way with lots of banter. Some of it is amusing: “We’re so discreet even we don’t know what we’re doing.”

Some of it is so flat you groan. I have in mind the scene where Blackman is interviewing a music professor at Warren Wilson College. Blackman notices a guitar case has a sticker with the Woody Guthrie line, “This machine kills fascists.” I will leave it to you to imagine where the dialog goes from there. Oh, here’s a hint – downhill on a zip-line. The barbecue banter smeared across the pages, chapter after chapter? I won’t touch it.

Minor characters are nicely drawn. An attorney’s taste in music is stuck in the 1960s and 70s. Album covers of the Beatles, the Stones, the Doors decorate the walls of his office. A park ranger is a believable bulldog of an investigator with a mind for jurisdiction.
One of Wainwright’s faculty colleagues is such an avid kayaker it has hurt his academic career.

The book shines with the history of the area. It’s embedded in the story. The house Sandburg bought in 1945 was once owned by the South Carolina planter who became the first secretary of the treasury of the Confederacy, Christopher G. Memminger. He lobbied the government in Richmond to move the Confederate capital to Flat Rock, which would have been more defensible. Legend says there’s a cache of Confederate silver buried on the farm. The book is filled with such tidbits.

The story moves almost as smoothly as Blackman’s Honda CR-V until the final chapters. A wobble develops in the author’s steering. The story winds up in a ditch of forced dialogue and stagey scenes, heavily damaged but not a total loss.

This is the third in de Castrique’s Blackman series. It makes you wonder what the other two are like.