Jack McKinney is a bright-eyed twenty-year-old in the business of buying
a snapbean farm with forty grand in cash, and attorney Matthew Hope
assists with the deal--until Jack's found dead in his condo, stabbed
fourteen times.
The backwoods seller wants his forty grand pronto, but nobody can find
the cash. And when Matthew pays a visit to the McKinney ranch, he gets
more than he bargained for. Jack's mother, Veronica, is a woman who
looks half her years, with cool gray eyes to match her ambivalent
attitude toward her son's death. The only thing more dangerous than
Veronica is daughter Sunny, the mirror image of her mother and a girl
who can hold her liquor. Everyone seems to have a theory about the
missing money, but Matthew's the only one who can get to the bottom of
the bum deal.
The fourth installment of Ed McBain's Matthew Hope Mysteries, Jack and
the Beanstalk delivers our lawyer into a world of seedy folks, sour
deals, and a family gone afoul.