Sanctuary: A Catalyst For Murder

Murder and political intrigue are front and center in Hanrahan’s third entry in his legal thriller series featuring Boston P.I. Bill Coine. A weekend getaway to Massachusetts’ Berkshire Mountains for Coine and his wife Jeanie end badly when he follows the smell of death and finds a dead body hanging from a beam in the hotel room next to his. The dead man is none other than Ted Prescott, Fairlane Township’s board of selectmen chairman. Prescott was responsible for the town’s sanctuary ordinance protecting undocumented immigrants in the community. The town’s chief of police, Tom Breshetti says it was suicide. Bill Coine, hired by Prescott’s widow, proves it was murder. However, he is soon conflicted when the widow insists Prescott was murdered by Jonathan Tanner, the one selectman who voted against the ordinance. Tanner publicly threatened his fellow selectmen if harm should ever come to his family at the hands of an illegal immigrant. A short time later, his son was killed by an undocu