Sunday, September 25, 2011

Bad Moon-Todd Ritter

Bad Moon


Todd Ritter

Minotaur, Oct 11 2011, $24.99

ISBN: 9780312622817



In 1969 as Neil Armstrong steps on the moon, the parents of nine year old Charlie Olmstead go to get him to watch on TV, but he is not in his bedroom as they thought. Perry Hollow, Pennsylvania Police Chief Jim Campbell leads the search that ends when they find the lad’s bike at the bottom of a nearby waterfall. Although his body was never found, the cops assumed he drowned.



Four decades later, Charlie’s brother Eric has returned to Perry Hollow to bury his mother. In honor of his mom who never gave up the hope her son would come home, he asks his high school girlfriend Police Chief Kat Campbell to reopen the cold case disappearance of his sibling. Eric also hires injured former state police officer turned cold case investigator Nick Donnelly to look into his brother’s disappearance. The trio finds newspaper clippings in the house of Eric’s late mom. Kat does a follow-up having a much better data base than her dad had; she uncovers the fact that several children vanished in what was called accidents during moon landings. As the threesome connect the dots of an apparent serial killer, Kat’s fifth grade son James resents his single mom spending all her time on the inquiry and none on him.



The second Kat and Nick collaboration (see Death Notice) is a terrific investigative thriller that grips the reader from the onset and several stunning but plausible spins later leaves fans satiated yet craving a third team-up soonest. The story line is fast-paced while rolling back the years using the successes and failures of NASA as a launch into political upheavals over forty years. Bad Moon is a powerful serial killer whodunit.



Harriet Klausner

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