Kirjahaku

Twenty years and a lifetime ago, Windeport Police Chief Sean Colbeth had his teenage heart badly broken when the girl he thought he loved dumped him for another guy in the most dramatic manner possible. Young love burns hot and fast, to be sure, but it wasn't until Suzanne Kellerman stepped into his life that Sean figured out just how deep the wounds to his soul had been, and how carefully he'd been hiding them from the world. And from himself.On a sultry July 4th holiday weekend two decades later, a chance discovery in one of the last standing icehouses in the county threatens to reopen those very wounds in the cruelest possible way. Tantalizing clues emerge that connect whatever happened in that lonely spot along the St. Mark's River to the disappearance of the very guy responsible for Sean's torment all those years earlier, a long forgotten cold case that continues to haunt his predecessor long after retirement. Forced to revisit his childhood in a village where people have known each other for generations, Sean tries to separate fond memories from harsh realities as he pursues a killer that never expected to be hunted.

Secrets can - and will - kill.Mired in the fallout from allowing a murderer to elude justice, the last thing Windeport Police Chief Sean Colbeth needs is another suspicious death in the small village. He gets one all the same when the bespectacled proprietor of Route One Hobbies, Walter Guernsey, is found dead a few days after the Fourth of July holiday. Known throughout the county for aisles well-stocked with eclectic materials supporting just about any special interest, the store's signature feature is an intricately detailed model railroad layout representing Windeport in miniature. Many paused on the sidewalk outside the store to watch Walter work on the layout begun by his grandfather - right up until he becomes part of the diorama himself, victim of a freak electrical accident.Sean is inclined to blame the death on an extraordinary stroke of bad luck but reconsiders when tantalizing evidence surfaces that Guernsey had been protecting a decades-old family secret, one that had been weighing heavily on him in the weeks leading up to his death. Digging through the old brownstone housing the hobby store only deepens the mystery, for clearly whatever Guernsey was holding onto had the potential to reshape Windeport itself - a very potent motive, perhaps, for more than a few notable village residents to keep Guernsey quiet. Permanently.Faced with a murder and a vengeful enemy willing to weaponize it in their crusade to take down the Police Chief, Sean finds his faith in the very institutions he's sworn to uphold begin to unravel when he starts to wonder if some secrets deserve to remain buried...