Book excerpt: Who is Matthias Jones and what is he doing here? Jones is not a forensic expert or a crackerjack private investigator. He does not possess overwhelming analytical abilities and relies on hunches called side road theories. Jones does not seek to solve murder cases, but is inexorably drawn into the accumulating evidence. The people that drop into his murder investigations appear to be bumblers and are terribly annoying, yet they contribute surprisingly cogent assessments of the crime. When the Fletcher patriarch is murdered, Jones suspects Fletcher's only daughter, the Fletcher company controller, and Thurmond, a wild, gun-toting neighbor.