“She moved far away to try and forget her past…”
- Book: Silenced Girls (Agent Tori Hunter #1)
- Location: Iowa, Minnesota, New York City (NYC)
- Author: Roger Stelljes
Told mostly in the third person, with one or two interjections by the perpetrator, who quite early on reveals himself to be male, which rather set me on edge as I had some strange notion that I would immediately be able to pick him out. However, I need not have worried, as author Roger Stelljes is much too sneaky for that and me solving the crime ahead of Tori and Will was never really a serious option.
And so, down to business…
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This story begins with the disappearance on July 4th, 1999, of Jessie (Jessica) Hunter, twin sister of Tori (Victoria) and daughters of Manchester Bay’s Sheriff, Big Jim Hunter. The girls could not be further apart in character, with Jessie being as outgoing and garrulous, as Tori is reserved and introspective. However, having lost their mother when they were very young, they are totally devoted to one another. So, when as time passes by, the only clue to Jessie’s whereabouts is her abandoned and deliberately sabotaged car, and Big Jim dies of a broken heart, a guilt-ridden Tori leaves the small town for good, vowing never to return.
Exactly twenty years to the day since Jessie’s disappearance and Tori, who is now a very successful FBI Agent living and working out of New York, receives a note in the post, containing details of a new disappearance, with an MO almost identical to that of Jessie’s still unsolved abduction, which will have her returning, albeit very reluctantly, back to the place of her childhood. Many of her former friends still live locally and are now well-respected members of a much-extended town, which Tori no longer recognises. Given the haste and circumstances of her departure Tori’s return is surprisingly welcomed and her friends connect with her almost as if she had never been away. Tori meets relative newcomer to Manchester Bay, widower and single parent, Will Braddock, who is chief detective for the Shepard County Sheriff’s Department. Sparks fly when Will and his colleagues don’t immediately make such a strong connection between the two cases as Tori does and as she is not there in any official FBI capacity, she has to use many rather ‘under the radar’ methods and call in numerous favours, to prove to Will that over the intervening twenty years, there have in fact been many similar disappearances of young girls, both from small towns in the surrounding areas and from adjoining States, none of which have been solved and which have never been correlated and cross-referenced for similarities.
Sparks of a different nature are also ignited when Tori and Will discover that, as two damaged souls, they have also been drawn together romantically and keeping work and pleasure separate becomes something of a juggling act, at which neither are very good!
Despite pressure from her FBI bosses to let the local force deal with what is becoming an ever more complex case involving many victims, Tori, who has eventually found a staunch ally for her theory in Will, calls on every available resource to research and track down a perpetrator who it is now clear, is known to his victims, especially when Will and she become personal targets for his games of cat and mouse. For the great and good of the community, Tori and Will’s conclusions are completely unpalatable, as by implication all their names are in the frame. When Tori makes the all-important link between the many cases, a suspect is quickly apprehended, despite his protestations of innocence. It takes the intervention of a third party to convince Will that they probably have the wrong man in custody, but by that time, Tori has gone missing, and the alert is raised….
Oh! How I do so hate it when my protagonists are left fearful for their lives. I guess you need to now know if both Will and Tori live to fight another day, and if they do, will that be together or apart…
Now that would be telling!!
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Not quite a dual timeline story, there were one or two flashback to events which began some twenty years ago and have been happening, largely unnoticed, ever since.
For a crime thriller, this was actually quite a lengthy read, however some fluent, concise and well-signposted chapters, kept the action moving along at a cracking pace, totally immersive, gripping and realistically detailed. In fact, the chapter titles were short, one-line extracts from the narrative, which kept me alert looking for the words to appear and check out in what context they had been used. A unique approach which really worked for me and added great structure to the finished product.
In retrospection, the story was more multi-layered, intense and textured, than I had at first thought. The suspenseful atmosphere became more tense with every passing page, with the future progress of the case balanced on a knife-edge for most of the time, as the powers that be would have been more than happy to put it back on the ‘cold case’ shelf, rather than have it upset the established norm and continued prosperity of the town.
At roughly the halfway point, there was a short detour away from the main storyline, which also led to a change in location. However, this was such a clever ploy by the author, as it not only focussed the spotlight on Agent Tori Hunter conducting her ‘day job’, so to speak, but it also served to bring the two halves of the main storyline together, with plenty of clever background detail; another interesting break from the norm, which kept me glued to the pages as they sped by and a welcome ‘added extra’ to satisfy my ‘armchair traveller’ appetite. Some excellent descriptive and observational narrative and dialogue offered a strong awareness and sense of time and place, enough to drop me into this small and rather insular community, amongst this tight-knit group representing the good and great of the town, and to have me running scared for my life, amongst its hidden and long forgotten backroads.
I had thought myself to be one step ahead of the game when it came to suspects, but that would have been far too easy for an author who kept on adding red-herrings and twists to the storyline, like they were going out of fashion. The last man standing so to speak, was actually on my list, but nowhere near the top and was one of those runners who you would have least expected to beat the field and one you would certainly have never placed your bets on.
Author Roger Stelljes also did a great job of exploring and examining family relationships and the emotional impact certain traumatic events, experienced and witnessed in childhood, can continue to have in adult years, without anyone really realising. In Tori this hidden damage manifests itself openly and overtly, although she won’t admit to it and certainly doesn’t realise the problem she tries so hard to hide. It is easy to observe the fragility and frailty of her troubled mind, despite the false bravado and no-nonsense attitude she exudes, which can make her appear cold, calculating and very difficult to connect with. For Will, his emotions are much more of an open book, as he strives to remember his past life, accept its finality, yet not dwell too deeply on his loss, as he has the emotional welfare of his son at the front and centre of his mind and knows that the time is fast approaching when he needs to move on.
Altogether, a well-defined cast of background characters, some of whom were more fully developed than others, none of whom were particularly compelling, but all of whom played their parts to perfection, so in that respect were very authentic and given a strong voice with which to direct and guide the storyline.
Given the bombshell of the last couple of pages, I am wondering exactly how Roger develops this series, which is a good enough reason for me to invest in book #2 just as soon as possible!
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