I don't know how long it's been since I enjoyed a mystery so much. Thank you, M. L. Hamilton, for a truly great book. So good I kept telling myself to quit at the end of this chapter for the night, and kept ignoring my own instructions.
Elaine Sutterfield had been a teacher, and a pretty good one at that. But that was before 13-year-old Jenny disappeared. It had been twelve years since the school dismissed Elaine for not taking good enough care of the students under her care on a field trip. She had been declared innocent at her trial. Her husband Roy's boyhood friend, Ted Owens, then a defense lawyer, had been brilliant in defending her. Now he was a judge in the Juvenile Courts, and responsible for setting up a city-wide program in Chicago to keep kids out of gangs.
Elaine spotted a newspaper article that named a young girl as recipient of an award for the anti-gang program. The picture of the girl choked Elaine Sutterfield up--literally. She inhaled coffee when she spotted the pendant the girl was wearing ... the same homemade carved wooden pendant the missing Jenny had been wearing the day she disappeared. When she could talk again, she pointed out the pendant to Roy. Roy was a police detective, and it had been his passionate hope to solve it for twelve long years.
He never told Lainie--his pet name for her--where he was going or how long he'd be. He is killed in a car wreck on his way home -- after he phones to tell her he knew who it was and hoped the man would voluntarily come forward. And then their house burns down.
A neighbor--also a cop--takes Elaine with him when he goes to visit his mother in Texas. She should be safe there, right?
Find out by purchasing from Amazon or Barnes and Noble. You won't be sorry.
I was given a free copy of this book by the author, but the opinions and evaluations are my own.
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