Deadly Declarations

An unlikely trio of retirees try to solve a man’s death, his strange will, and the 250-year-old colonial period mystery of the controversial and long-vanished First American Declaration of Independence, actions which–if successful–will change United States history. That is, if they don’t die trying.

* Winner 2022 American Fiction Awards: Mystery/Suspense: Cozy Mystery Category *
* Finalist 2022 International Book Awards: Thriller/Adventure Category *
* Bronze Medal 2022 Readers’ Favorite International Book Awards: Legal Thriller Category *
*Finalist 2022 American Book Fest Best Book Awards: Historical Fiction Category*
*Finalist 2022 American Book Fest Best Book Awards: Mystery/Suspense Category*
*North Carolina Society of Historians Award of Excellence*

Deadly Declarations is a little bit like putting Thomas Jefferson on Paul Revere's horse with North Carolina cornbread in the saddle bag. What a recipe: Mix a North Carolina, Mecklenburg County 1775 mystery with Thomas Jefferson and constitutional history; then throw in a present day retirement home and its quirky characters. You end up with a feast of good reading. Landis Wade has mixed it all together with a writerly touch that will have you licking your chops. Delicious, funny, suspenseful. –Clyde Edgerton, author of Walking Across Egypt and Raney

It’s modern day in the New South City of Charlotte, North Carolina, when three retirees at the Independence Retirement Community, a/k/a The Indie, team up to solve two mysteries related to the death of a 96-year-old resident. Why was his manuscript about the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence missing when they found his body? And why did his handwritten will dated the day he died disinherit his beloved granddaughter (his only heir), and leave his $50 million fortune to Sue Ellen Parker, the most despised resident at the Indie?

At the urging of Chuck Yeager Alexander, an optimistic soul who loves historical conspiracies, and Harriet Keaton, a former businesswoman with an extreme dislike of Sue Ellen Parker, Craig Travail, a trial lawyer recently ousted from his law firm after 40 years, reluctantly goes to court to challenge the dead man’s will for the granddaughter. This decision sets in motion a series of dangerous events that could lead the threesome to discover the answer to a revolutionary war period mystery that has evaded historians for 250 years.

Deadly Declarations plunges readers into the world of history and retirement, where getting older is a combination of fear, doubt, humor, and new life, and then transports readers to the courtroom and to the Virginia countryside to prove that age is just a number when searching for and finding the truth about the past.