The King Falls

from Bluffs & Bayous January / February 2022

Generations of Freedom

THE KING FALLS: A Bridge to Death Mystery

By R. J. Lee

a specific time for an individual, one-on-one reveal. His being brutally murdered thwarts this plan—but who in this house of cards is the culprit?

His professionally ruthless and manipulative father? His doting but demanding mother with early onset Alzheimer’s? A thwarted business rival? One or two former paramours? A trusted and knowing priest? His valued young, single, savvy, and comely part-time cook and housekeeper? Or perhaps others on the original or select invitation list—or excluded from it?

Author R. J. Lee, of course, is Natchez native Rob Kuehnle, currently of Oxford, Mississippi. He will be one of the noted authors on tap for the 33rd Natchez Literary and Cinema Celebration scheduled for February 24-26, 2022. He and two other authors will be featured during the Literature at Lunch session and panel discussion on Saturday, February 25, at the Carriage House restaurant beginning at 11:30 a.m.

About the book’s Natchez connection, Lee explains, “This novel continues to mention and involve actual Natchez (Rosalie) places of business and churches. St. Mary Basilica plays a significant role in this plot. Under-the-Hill, Silver Street Gifts and the forthcoming Viking Cruise Line docks are also worked in.”

Lee also will be in Natchez during the first week of April 2022, the scheduled time for Kensington Publishing Corp.’s release of The King Falls, for a book-signing fundraiser at the George W. Armstrong Library. All proceeds will go to the library as they have with the book signings for his previous Bridge to Death Mystery novels.

For more information on the Natchez Literary and Cinema Celebration (NLCC), please visit its website https://www.colin.edu/community/ natchez-literary-and-cinema-celebration/.

Jean Nosser Biglane is the copy editor and an occasional contributing writer for Bluffs & Bayous. In addition, she continues in her profession, at varying times over the decades, as high school, junior college, and university English teacher.

Set to be released in April 2022 is R. J. Lee’s The King Falls, the fourth in his popular Bridge to Death Mystery series. The “bridge,” as his avid mystery followers know, is the card game so popular with generations in the South; and this game and what’s in the cards, either literally, figuratively, or both, is what sparks the suspense of this tale.

As with the series’ previous novels, the tale unfolds in the Deep South, the original Spanish-land-grant South of Rosalie, Mississippi, a mirror image of Natchez, Mississippi. Familiar characters await the plot’s eager readers—Wendy Winchester Rierson, investigative reporter for the local newspaper, sleuth and solver of the murders in the three previous novels, and president of Rosalie Country Club’s Bridge Bunch; her husband and town’s police department detective, Ross Rierson; and her long-time and well-respected chief-of-police father, Bax Winchester, the one from whom the novel’s main character gets her crimesolving genes.

In this novel’s first thirty pages, the suspense builds around the fated victim and real estate scion Campbell King Kohl, “King” to all who knew him, and the multiple persons of interest in solving his murder mystery—“Murder in a house of cards” as the novel’s cover bills it. King has harbored a profound and explosive secret and has planned a big reveal at his next bridge party, always an exclusive gathering. However, the day before, he cancels the event and texts only a select few of the major players, each to come promptly to his home the next day at