On a cloudy Thursday in April, Detective Lieutenant Sam Jenkins retired from a very large and overworked police department in New York.

The next day, he and his wife, Kate, closed the sale on their Long Island home, put their old Scottish terrier, Bitsey, in the car, and drove to East Tennessee. They had vacationed there several times and purchased land with a view on the peaceful side of the Smoky Mountains.

In retirement, they planned to travel and take advantage of a slower lifestyle. But that didn't last. Kate took on several volunteer jobs, and Sam, bought a mid-life crisis car, a restored 1967 Austin-Healy 3000. Then he created the ultimate vegetable garden.

After years of relative idleness, Jenkins realized the missing element in his life was the adrenalin kick he got from being a cop. Coincidentally, the neighboring town of Prospect began looking for a new police chief. It was a match made in heaven--well almost.

Sam Jenkins never thought about being a fish out of water during the twenty years he spent solving crimes in New York. But things change, and after retiring to Tennessee, he gets that feeling. Jenkins becomes a cop again and is thrown headlong into a murder investigation and a steaming kettle of fish, down-home style. The victim, Cecil Lovejoy, couldn't have deserved it more. His death was the inexorable result of years misspent and appears to be no great loss, except the prime suspect is Sam's personal friend. Jenkins' abilities are attacked when Lovejoy's influential widow urges politicians to reassign the case to state investigators. Feeling like "a pork chop at a bar mitzvah" in his new workplace, Sam suspects something isn't kosher when the family tries to force him out of the picture. In true Jenkins style, Sam turns common police practice on its ear to insure an innocent man doesn't fall prey to an imperfect system and the guilty party receives appropriate justice. A NEW PROSPECT takes the reader through a New South resolutely clinging to its past and traditional way of keeping family business strictly within the family.