Book excerpt: Bestseller and multiple award–winning author Linda Barnes returns with the most personal case to date for her popular Boston PI, Carlotta Carlyle. Carlotta, in unfamiliar territory working on her own behalf, finds herself in the middle of a complicated case that has as much to do with the people she loves as the backstreets of Boston, and beyond. For starters, Carlotta wants to know what her on-again, off-again boyfriend Sam Gianelli did to earn himself a secret indictment for murder that's keeping him out of the country. A man with plenty of secrets, he won't tell her anything, much less let her help, and she isn't having any more luck with her old friends at the Boston PD. Sam's exile could be connected to the mob—he is in the family—but she's not buying it. It couldn't be that simple. Nothing involving Sam ever is. Faced with nothing but dead ends, Carlotta goes back to basics and takes a case for a nervous bride-to-be who wants to make sure her fiancé is being faithful. Simple enough, but when her client turns up dead, Carlotta catches the kind of break she wished she hadn't. While nothing is as it seems in Lie Down with the Devil, one thing is clear: Readers know that when they're reading Linda Barnes, they're in the hands of a maestro.