Hilary and Mark Bradley are trapped in a web of suspicion. Last year, accusations of a torrid affair with a student cost Mark his teaching job and made the young couple into outcasts in their remote island town off the Lake Michigan coast. Now another teenage girl is found dead on a deserted beach… and once again, Mark faces a hostile town convinced of his guilt.
Hilary Bradley is determined to prove that Mark is innocent, but she’s on a lonely, dangerous quest. Even when she discovers that the murdered girl was witness to a horrific crime years earlier, the police are certain she’s throwing up a smoke screen to protect her husband. Only a quirky detective named Cab Bolton seems willing to believe Hilary’s story.
Hilary and Cab soon find that people in this community are willing to kill to keep their secrets hidden – and to make sure Mark doesn’t get away with murder. And with each shocking revelation, even Hilary begins to wonder whether her husband is truly innocent.
Freeman’s first stand-alone thriller since his Stride novels is a knockout.
Fantastic!!! Brian Freeman hit this one out of the park! I thought this book was one of his best if not THE best! Great characters, lots of mystery. I don’t like books that you have it figured out by page fifty. This one has suspense to the end! Love it!
super police procedural-amateur sleuth thriller In Door County, Wisconsin, teacher Mark Bradley is accused of an affair with a teenage student Tresa Fischer. Both deny the accusations though the pupil admits she has a crush on Mark. He is fired as the townsfolk figuratively inscribe a P on his forehead for “predator”. His wife Hilary believes him.Â
“Doubt is like a genie you can’t put back in the box once it is free.” This is a thriller about predators, those who stalk, those who plunder innocence with impunity, those who kill to conceal their crimes. And while there are attractive male teachers who retain rigorous boundaries with their young female charges, there are also those who seek opportunity. Fro Mark Bradley, the recipe is disastrous, a talented student’s diary taken as trough by a suspicious mother. No matter Tresa Fischer’s protestations of fantasy, principal and parents alike judge Mark guilty,…