The Last Passenger

On the last crossing of the night, Margaret Ellery finds a dying stranger and a library card from 1998. The sheriff calls it a mugging. Margaret, who spent forty years grading the excuses of teenagers, knows a lie when she hears one. The ferry's footage has a gap. The manifest lists three passengers who don't exist. The photograph that explains it all was filed away ninety years ago and never looked at again. On the midnight crossing, with no one to help but the passengers themselves, she says the killer's name over the public address system. A we-solve-murders mystery for readers who like their clues quiet, procedural and perfectly fair.