Sandra Parshall's Blog
April 17, 2015
What year is it?
Technological changes have come at breakneck speed in the past few years, and I think a lot of people are starting to forget that we weren’t always so dependent on our gadgets and devices.
I’ve been startled several times lately by reader complaints that my first Rachel Goddard novel, The Heat of the Moon, seems “dated” and, indeed, “weird” because Rachel doesn’t carry a cell phone and doesn’t use the internet to look for old newspaper stories. Why, they ask, would Rachel have to go to the Library of Congress to look up anything, when all the information in the world is available online with a few clicks?
Let me clarify a few things.
The Heat of the Moon was published in 2006. Books are seldom set in the year they’re published. In this case, the book was written and set in 1997. (At one point I write, “It was the summer of the comet with the funny name, Hale-Bopp.”) As with so many “first” novels (this was actually the eleventh book I’d written), it made the rounds of New York publishers for a year, had strong interest from two editors who loved it and wanted to publish it but couldn’t get it past the committees that make the final decisions. I put it aside for several years, until my friend Judy Clemens urged me to submit it to Poisoned Pen Press. PPP kept the manuscript for 16 months before offering a contract in 2005. It finally saw print in March of 2006.
I suppose I could have rewritten it to include cell phones and internet, but the editor loved it as it was and published it without altering a single word. (I believe she added a comma here and there, as she has strong views about serial commas.) But here’s the thing readers may not realize: even if I had “updated” it, Rachel’s search for information wouldn’t have been very different.
Rachel was looking for newspaper stories about events that occurred in Minnesota in the mid-1970s. This may come as a shock, but few newspapers had all of their archived copies online in 1997, when I wrote the book, or in 2005, when I sold it. In fact, not all historical copies are online even now. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, today, has digitized copies beginning with 1986 editions. That wouldn’t have done Rachel any good, even if those back issues had been available through the internet in 1997. The same is true of many other periodicals. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, for example, offers online copies starting with 1990. Older copies are available on microfilm.
Furthermore, the Library of Congress is not the all-encompassing repository of digital materials that some people imagine, and you can’t find every page of every newspaper ever printed by going to the LOC website. The National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP), a partnership between the LOC and the National Endowment for the Humanities, began to take shape in 2003, and the first grants were awarded in 2005 for the collection and digitization of selected (not all) newspaper pages. The actual work is being done by state libraries, historical societies, and universities, and each grant covers the digitization of 100,000 pages that are considered to be of historical importance. The digitization is up to 1922 so far. (See the collection at the Chronicling America site. http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/)
As for cell phones, when I wrote The Heat of the Moon in 1997, I didn’t know a single person who owned one, and I never saw people using them in public. Until the Motorola StarTAC, the first flip phone, came out in 1996, all cellular telephones were bulky and heavy, some weighing as much as a pound, and they cost a small fortune. The StarTAC was small but retailed for $1,000. Most mobile phones continued to be hefty for several more years. The precursor of smartphones was the Nokia Communicator 9000i (1997), the first phone with a separate keyboard. It weighed 14 ounces and cost close to $1,000. Rachel could have tucked a StarTAC into a pocket or purse, but as a low-paid junior veterinarian just beginning her practice, she would have fainted at the thought of spending $1,000 on a telephone.
The boom in cell phone use didn’t begin until the first decade of this century, with the advent of 3G (third generation) technology and falling prices. By the end of 2007, about 295 million people worldwide owned mobile telephones. That was 9% of the entire planet’s potential customer base. Even if The Heat of the Moon had been set in 2006, when it was published, Rachel’s lack of a cell phone would not have been unusual.
In later books, Rachel does carry a cell phone and use the internet, and like a lot of series writers, I avoid identifying the years in which the stories take place. The aging of characters is a problem all authors have to deal with when they write about the same people over a long period. Should we let them age naturally with a year or so passing between books? Should we anchor them in a specific time period, and allow only a few weeks to pass in story time between installments?
Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Milhone started out in the 1980s and there she remains, with her land line and her little black dress. James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux, a Vietnam veteran, now has an adult daughter and is nearing retirement. Harry Bosch, another Vietnam vet, has aged in Michael Connelly’s books, but in the TV version he’s back in his forties and has been transformed into a Gulf War combatant. Robert Crais made his Elvis Cole and Joe Pike Vietnam veterans too, but today they seem as young and active as ever, unaffected by the passage of four decades. Crais hasn’t taken them into their sixties, yet he hasn’t noticeably slowed the passage of time in the outer world either. It’s fiction. If you like the characters, you don’t fret about such matters.
I allowed Rachel to age, but I didn’t let 14 years go by between book one and book six. She is now in her mid-thirties, not 41. What year is it? I have no idea, and I don’t care, because it isn’t important to any of the plots.
Although I’m sure most readers know a historical novel when they see one and don’t expect the characters to whip out cell phones or search the internet, I fear—if my own experience is any indication—that they’re less forgiving when novels are set in the near past. The 1970s have at last achieved the status of history, but do books set in 1985 or 1995 seem merely “dated” and therefore unreadable?
With my first book, I apparently landed on a dividing line that some people are unable to cross mentally. Trust me, though: cell phones and internet searches are irrelevant. All that counts is the story. Of the books I’ve published, The Heat of the Moon remains my favorite.
I’ve been startled several times lately by reader complaints that my first Rachel Goddard novel, The Heat of the Moon, seems “dated” and, indeed, “weird” because Rachel doesn’t carry a cell phone and doesn’t use the internet to look for old newspaper stories. Why, they ask, would Rachel have to go to the Library of Congress to look up anything, when all the information in the world is available online with a few clicks?
Let me clarify a few things.
The Heat of the Moon was published in 2006. Books are seldom set in the year they’re published. In this case, the book was written and set in 1997. (At one point I write, “It was the summer of the comet with the funny name, Hale-Bopp.”) As with so many “first” novels (this was actually the eleventh book I’d written), it made the rounds of New York publishers for a year, had strong interest from two editors who loved it and wanted to publish it but couldn’t get it past the committees that make the final decisions. I put it aside for several years, until my friend Judy Clemens urged me to submit it to Poisoned Pen Press. PPP kept the manuscript for 16 months before offering a contract in 2005. It finally saw print in March of 2006.
I suppose I could have rewritten it to include cell phones and internet, but the editor loved it as it was and published it without altering a single word. (I believe she added a comma here and there, as she has strong views about serial commas.) But here’s the thing readers may not realize: even if I had “updated” it, Rachel’s search for information wouldn’t have been very different.
Rachel was looking for newspaper stories about events that occurred in Minnesota in the mid-1970s. This may come as a shock, but few newspapers had all of their archived copies online in 1997, when I wrote the book, or in 2005, when I sold it. In fact, not all historical copies are online even now. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, today, has digitized copies beginning with 1986 editions. That wouldn’t have done Rachel any good, even if those back issues had been available through the internet in 1997. The same is true of many other periodicals. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, for example, offers online copies starting with 1990. Older copies are available on microfilm.
Furthermore, the Library of Congress is not the all-encompassing repository of digital materials that some people imagine, and you can’t find every page of every newspaper ever printed by going to the LOC website. The National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP), a partnership between the LOC and the National Endowment for the Humanities, began to take shape in 2003, and the first grants were awarded in 2005 for the collection and digitization of selected (not all) newspaper pages. The actual work is being done by state libraries, historical societies, and universities, and each grant covers the digitization of 100,000 pages that are considered to be of historical importance. The digitization is up to 1922 so far. (See the collection at the Chronicling America site. http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/)
As for cell phones, when I wrote The Heat of the Moon in 1997, I didn’t know a single person who owned one, and I never saw people using them in public. Until the Motorola StarTAC, the first flip phone, came out in 1996, all cellular telephones were bulky and heavy, some weighing as much as a pound, and they cost a small fortune. The StarTAC was small but retailed for $1,000. Most mobile phones continued to be hefty for several more years. The precursor of smartphones was the Nokia Communicator 9000i (1997), the first phone with a separate keyboard. It weighed 14 ounces and cost close to $1,000. Rachel could have tucked a StarTAC into a pocket or purse, but as a low-paid junior veterinarian just beginning her practice, she would have fainted at the thought of spending $1,000 on a telephone.
The boom in cell phone use didn’t begin until the first decade of this century, with the advent of 3G (third generation) technology and falling prices. By the end of 2007, about 295 million people worldwide owned mobile telephones. That was 9% of the entire planet’s potential customer base. Even if The Heat of the Moon had been set in 2006, when it was published, Rachel’s lack of a cell phone would not have been unusual.
In later books, Rachel does carry a cell phone and use the internet, and like a lot of series writers, I avoid identifying the years in which the stories take place. The aging of characters is a problem all authors have to deal with when they write about the same people over a long period. Should we let them age naturally with a year or so passing between books? Should we anchor them in a specific time period, and allow only a few weeks to pass in story time between installments?
Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Milhone started out in the 1980s and there she remains, with her land line and her little black dress. James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux, a Vietnam veteran, now has an adult daughter and is nearing retirement. Harry Bosch, another Vietnam vet, has aged in Michael Connelly’s books, but in the TV version he’s back in his forties and has been transformed into a Gulf War combatant. Robert Crais made his Elvis Cole and Joe Pike Vietnam veterans too, but today they seem as young and active as ever, unaffected by the passage of four decades. Crais hasn’t taken them into their sixties, yet he hasn’t noticeably slowed the passage of time in the outer world either. It’s fiction. If you like the characters, you don’t fret about such matters.
I allowed Rachel to age, but I didn’t let 14 years go by between book one and book six. She is now in her mid-thirties, not 41. What year is it? I have no idea, and I don’t care, because it isn’t important to any of the plots.
Although I’m sure most readers know a historical novel when they see one and don’t expect the characters to whip out cell phones or search the internet, I fear—if my own experience is any indication—that they’re less forgiving when novels are set in the near past. The 1970s have at last achieved the status of history, but do books set in 1985 or 1995 seem merely “dated” and therefore unreadable?
With my first book, I apparently landed on a dividing line that some people are unable to cross mentally. Trust me, though: cell phones and internet searches are irrelevant. All that counts is the story. Of the books I’ve published, The Heat of the Moon remains my favorite.
September 30, 2014
What to Expect When You're Having a Book
by Sandra Parshall
Having a book is a life-changing event that no one should approach lightly, but it will be an easier and more joyous experience if you know what to expect every step of the way. Here, in condensed form, are a few pointers that I hope will be helpful.
Conception
You are madly, passionately in love with The Idea. It consumes you, heart and soul, mind and body. You want to move in with The Idea and share every second of every day with it.
Together the two of you are going to make a baby more beautiful and brilliant than any the world has ever seen.
First Trimester
It’s real. At the moment it is little more than a blob on the screen, but you feel it growing, blooming, becoming something substantial that will change your life forever.
Yes, you have those queasy mornings when the niggling doubts creep in as you face the day, and those middle of the night, staring at the ceiling moments when a voice in your head whispers: What the heck am I doing? I can’t handle this! I’m going to fail, I’m going to produce a baby so ugly that people will avert their eyes and ask each other how it’s possible that such a hideous creature has been inflicted upon the world.
But most of the time you’re still excited, filled with anticipation. You start a list of possible names and dismiss with a weak smile the dreadful monikers suggested by family and friends. Your baby must have a special name, evocative and memorable.
Second Tri-mester
Of course you still love your baby. But now and then you don’t like it. The first kick in the gut was fun. Those that have followed, not so much. You don’t enjoy lying awake at night, worrying, while the baby acts up. You despair of finding a way to make it settle down.
And it’s getting bigger and bigger. Huge. Gigantic. Enormous. It’s not supposed to be this big, is it? But what can you do about it now?
The baby has taken over your life. You can’t even think of anything else. But this is what you wanted, isn’t it?
Well, isn’t it?
Third Tri-mester
WILL THIS NEVER END?? You don’t care anymore what the blasted baby looks like. You don’t care whether anyone will love it. You’re not even sure you will love it. Just please, dear God in heaven, let this be over soon.
Post-partum
Oh, the agony, the wrench of separation. Your baby is no longer a part of you. It’s out in the world now, where any idiot is free to take a look and pronounce it the ugliest thing they’ve ever seen. You can glory in the compliments but you can’t shield your baby from the snarky comments and you can’t force indifferent people to pay attention to it. Your baby, like each of us, is alone in the world and will stand or fall on its own merits.
Whether weeping or smiling, you must turn away, point yourself forward... toward the next Idea that’s waiting to seduce you.
Having a book is a life-changing event that no one should approach lightly, but it will be an easier and more joyous experience if you know what to expect every step of the way. Here, in condensed form, are a few pointers that I hope will be helpful.
Conception
You are madly, passionately in love with The Idea. It consumes you, heart and soul, mind and body. You want to move in with The Idea and share every second of every day with it.
Together the two of you are going to make a baby more beautiful and brilliant than any the world has ever seen.
First Trimester
It’s real. At the moment it is little more than a blob on the screen, but you feel it growing, blooming, becoming something substantial that will change your life forever.
Yes, you have those queasy mornings when the niggling doubts creep in as you face the day, and those middle of the night, staring at the ceiling moments when a voice in your head whispers: What the heck am I doing? I can’t handle this! I’m going to fail, I’m going to produce a baby so ugly that people will avert their eyes and ask each other how it’s possible that such a hideous creature has been inflicted upon the world.
But most of the time you’re still excited, filled with anticipation. You start a list of possible names and dismiss with a weak smile the dreadful monikers suggested by family and friends. Your baby must have a special name, evocative and memorable.
Second Tri-mester
Of course you still love your baby. But now and then you don’t like it. The first kick in the gut was fun. Those that have followed, not so much. You don’t enjoy lying awake at night, worrying, while the baby acts up. You despair of finding a way to make it settle down.
And it’s getting bigger and bigger. Huge. Gigantic. Enormous. It’s not supposed to be this big, is it? But what can you do about it now?
The baby has taken over your life. You can’t even think of anything else. But this is what you wanted, isn’t it?
Well, isn’t it?
Third Tri-mester
WILL THIS NEVER END?? You don’t care anymore what the blasted baby looks like. You don’t care whether anyone will love it. You’re not even sure you will love it. Just please, dear God in heaven, let this be over soon.
Post-partum
Oh, the agony, the wrench of separation. Your baby is no longer a part of you. It’s out in the world now, where any idiot is free to take a look and pronounce it the ugliest thing they’ve ever seen. You can glory in the compliments but you can’t shield your baby from the snarky comments and you can’t force indifferent people to pay attention to it. Your baby, like each of us, is alone in the world and will stand or fall on its own merits.
Whether weeping or smiling, you must turn away, point yourself forward... toward the next Idea that’s waiting to seduce you.
April 13, 2014
Obnoxious People
My characters are tough so I won't have to be.
Rachel Goddard stands up for herself and for anybody, or any animal, who needs protection. Hurt her or somebody she cares about and you'll be sorry.
Tom Bridger is a no-nonsense cop. If you know what's good for you, you'll show him some respect.
Rachel and Tom's creator is a wimp.
I'll do something if I see an animal or child being abused, but I'm not so good at standing up to people who bully me. Even online, or by e-mail, my responses to nasty people are sadly lacking in snark factor. I long to be like Rachel or Tom, instead of always being the type who thinks of a stunning, unanswerable rejoinder 24 hours too late.
In hopes of improving my skills, I devoured a Psychology Today article titled "Difficult People: How to handle whiners, manipulators, bullies & more."
Straight off, I was discouraged. The lead-in to the article warns that some types of troublemaker are on the rise. Just what the world needs -- more nasty people.
The article's author, Hara Estroff Marano, accurately pinpoints the way a lot of these people operate. They provoke us. They drive us to the limit of our patience. They keep it up until they get a reaction, then they give us that "What=s wrong with you?" attitude that makes us doubt ourselves and feel guilty because we behaved badly. It's the emotional equivalent, Marano notes, of being mowed down by a hit-and-run driver.
I was reassured by Marano's advice that it's best to simply avoid the people who make us feel bad. That's what I do as much as possible, not out of wisdom but out of cowardice. I'm profoundly grateful that I no longer have to work in an office, where I would be forced to spend time around people I might not like.
But we can't always walk away. Sometimes we have to deal with troublesome people, whether we want to or not? So how should we handle them?
Marano offers handy classifications for these banes of our existence: the hostile (includes bullies); the neurotic; the rejection-sensitive; the egoist. All have one trait in common: they care only about themselves and are not interested in anyone else's feelings. And the rest of us need one trait to deal with them: emotional maturity.
Most of us have had friends who fit the definition of pessimistic, anxious, negative neurotics who can't let anyone enjoy life. They're worriers. They want to help you by detailing every awful thing that might happen on your vacation or by making you see that your success is just a sham. I'll admit that I slip into this pattern myself sometimes, but I aim my pessimism at my own life, nobody else's. Still, I understand how tiresome it is to try to reason with people like this.
Bullying, hostile people are all around us, wherever we go, including the internet and chat groups. And who among us has not had a bully for a boss at one time or another? They verbally abuse us, try to control us, and humiliate us in front of others. If we react, our jobs are in peril. Another type of bully is the colleague or supposed friend who is nice to your face but
does everything possible to undercut you. Marano recommends a calm confrontation. I know I could never do it. I will always prefer to stay silent and walk away.
The rejection-sensitive clingers are incredibly annoying but so pathetic that we hate to hurt them. Their constant emotional demands can become overwhelming. They want all of our attention, and they want it immediately. Some of these people become stalkers. Unfortunately, this type of behavior appears to be on the rise.
So what can we do when we have to deal with annoying people? We can control our own reaction. Stay calm. Hold ourselves aloof from the other person's one-man show. Walk away from bullies and people who are always angry.
And if we're writers, we take notes. These people make great characters.
Rachel Goddard stands up for herself and for anybody, or any animal, who needs protection. Hurt her or somebody she cares about and you'll be sorry.
Tom Bridger is a no-nonsense cop. If you know what's good for you, you'll show him some respect.
Rachel and Tom's creator is a wimp.
I'll do something if I see an animal or child being abused, but I'm not so good at standing up to people who bully me. Even online, or by e-mail, my responses to nasty people are sadly lacking in snark factor. I long to be like Rachel or Tom, instead of always being the type who thinks of a stunning, unanswerable rejoinder 24 hours too late.
In hopes of improving my skills, I devoured a Psychology Today article titled "Difficult People: How to handle whiners, manipulators, bullies & more."
Straight off, I was discouraged. The lead-in to the article warns that some types of troublemaker are on the rise. Just what the world needs -- more nasty people.
The article's author, Hara Estroff Marano, accurately pinpoints the way a lot of these people operate. They provoke us. They drive us to the limit of our patience. They keep it up until they get a reaction, then they give us that "What=s wrong with you?" attitude that makes us doubt ourselves and feel guilty because we behaved badly. It's the emotional equivalent, Marano notes, of being mowed down by a hit-and-run driver.
I was reassured by Marano's advice that it's best to simply avoid the people who make us feel bad. That's what I do as much as possible, not out of wisdom but out of cowardice. I'm profoundly grateful that I no longer have to work in an office, where I would be forced to spend time around people I might not like.
But we can't always walk away. Sometimes we have to deal with troublesome people, whether we want to or not? So how should we handle them?
Marano offers handy classifications for these banes of our existence: the hostile (includes bullies); the neurotic; the rejection-sensitive; the egoist. All have one trait in common: they care only about themselves and are not interested in anyone else's feelings. And the rest of us need one trait to deal with them: emotional maturity.
Most of us have had friends who fit the definition of pessimistic, anxious, negative neurotics who can't let anyone enjoy life. They're worriers. They want to help you by detailing every awful thing that might happen on your vacation or by making you see that your success is just a sham. I'll admit that I slip into this pattern myself sometimes, but I aim my pessimism at my own life, nobody else's. Still, I understand how tiresome it is to try to reason with people like this.
Bullying, hostile people are all around us, wherever we go, including the internet and chat groups. And who among us has not had a bully for a boss at one time or another? They verbally abuse us, try to control us, and humiliate us in front of others. If we react, our jobs are in peril. Another type of bully is the colleague or supposed friend who is nice to your face but
does everything possible to undercut you. Marano recommends a calm confrontation. I know I could never do it. I will always prefer to stay silent and walk away.
The rejection-sensitive clingers are incredibly annoying but so pathetic that we hate to hurt them. Their constant emotional demands can become overwhelming. They want all of our attention, and they want it immediately. Some of these people become stalkers. Unfortunately, this type of behavior appears to be on the rise.
So what can we do when we have to deal with annoying people? We can control our own reaction. Stay calm. Hold ourselves aloof from the other person's one-man show. Walk away from bullies and people who are always angry.
And if we're writers, we take notes. These people make great characters.
March 30, 2014
Poisoned Ground: Behind the Book
Where do I get my ideas? That’s a frequent question from readers, and my answer is always, “From the world around me.”
That doesn’t mean I look through the newspaper, lift a situation whole and transplant it to a novel. Events in the real world provide inspiration, not blueprints. Any idea has to be tailored to my protagonists, veterinarian Rachel Goddard and Sheriff’s Deputy (now Sheriff) Tom Bridger, and my rural mountain setting in southwest Virginia. I can’t write a story that could take place anywhere else.
In the case of Poisoned Ground, I was inspired by my disappointment with a novel by a favorite writer. I thought he wasted a good concept by never taking the story beyond the surface. I didn’t steal his plot, by any means. But it reminded me of a controversy in the early 1990s in my own area, Northern Virginia, when Disney proposed building a theme park (“Disney’s America”) and 3,000 acres of housing and commercial development in a rural community called Haymarket. A ferocious battle raged between those who wanted development and jobs and those who wanted to preserve their way of life. Disney lost, but the argument over what might have been continues even today.
What would happen, I wondered, if a developer wanted to impose enormous changes on little Mason County, my fictional community in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia? No one died in the fight over Haymarket, but in Mason County the guns would come out. Never satisfied with a simple story, I began to imagine a scenario in which the violence appears to be connected with current events but actually has its roots deep in the poisoned ground of the past.
From there I developed a plot I could use.
Once I knew what Rachel and Tom would be up against, I started filling out the cast. Rachel’s friend Joanna McKendrick, who owns the horse farm that developers covet as the central section of a sprawling resort for the rich, plays an important role in this novel, as do the people whose land surrounds hers. My favorite new characters are the Jones sisters – Winter, Spring, Summer, and their deceased sister Autumn. Once these eccentric ladies moved into my imagination they began creating themselves, often surprising even me.
As the surface story plays out, the characters’ secrets are uncovered and the hidden story rises to the surface in bits and pieces to gradually form a complete picture. Rachel is in the thick of things as usual, and Tom – recently elected Sheriff and now married to Rachel – has several murders and serious acts of vandalism to deal with as the furor escalates.
So there you have the answer. A disappointing read, an old news story – in this case, at least, that’s where my ideas came from.
That doesn’t mean I look through the newspaper, lift a situation whole and transplant it to a novel. Events in the real world provide inspiration, not blueprints. Any idea has to be tailored to my protagonists, veterinarian Rachel Goddard and Sheriff’s Deputy (now Sheriff) Tom Bridger, and my rural mountain setting in southwest Virginia. I can’t write a story that could take place anywhere else.
In the case of Poisoned Ground, I was inspired by my disappointment with a novel by a favorite writer. I thought he wasted a good concept by never taking the story beyond the surface. I didn’t steal his plot, by any means. But it reminded me of a controversy in the early 1990s in my own area, Northern Virginia, when Disney proposed building a theme park (“Disney’s America”) and 3,000 acres of housing and commercial development in a rural community called Haymarket. A ferocious battle raged between those who wanted development and jobs and those who wanted to preserve their way of life. Disney lost, but the argument over what might have been continues even today.
What would happen, I wondered, if a developer wanted to impose enormous changes on little Mason County, my fictional community in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia? No one died in the fight over Haymarket, but in Mason County the guns would come out. Never satisfied with a simple story, I began to imagine a scenario in which the violence appears to be connected with current events but actually has its roots deep in the poisoned ground of the past.
From there I developed a plot I could use.
Once I knew what Rachel and Tom would be up against, I started filling out the cast. Rachel’s friend Joanna McKendrick, who owns the horse farm that developers covet as the central section of a sprawling resort for the rich, plays an important role in this novel, as do the people whose land surrounds hers. My favorite new characters are the Jones sisters – Winter, Spring, Summer, and their deceased sister Autumn. Once these eccentric ladies moved into my imagination they began creating themselves, often surprising even me.
As the surface story plays out, the characters’ secrets are uncovered and the hidden story rises to the surface in bits and pieces to gradually form a complete picture. Rachel is in the thick of things as usual, and Tom – recently elected Sheriff and now married to Rachel – has several murders and serious acts of vandalism to deal with as the furor escalates.
So there you have the answer. A disappointing read, an old news story – in this case, at least, that’s where my ideas came from.
