NO STONE UNTURNED

The year is 1960. Reporter Ellie Stone (Styx & Stone, 2013) looks for her big break covering the grisly murder of a beautiful college student in upstate New York.

Everyone in New Holland agreed that Judge Harrison Shaw’s daughter Jordan was the best. She was homecoming queen in high school and is now a sophomore at Tufts, where she's the star of the French Department. Straight-arrow Tom Quint adored her, bad-boy Pukey Boyle lusted after her, and ungainly Glenda Whalen idolized her. So how did Jordan’s naked body end up in the woods the weekend after Thanksgiving? Sent by the New Holland Republic to take pictures for a story written by George Walsh, a rival reporter, Ellie hopes to get a scoop of her own by finding Jordan’s car, which turns up parked at the Mohawk Motel. She also finds out from the medical examiner that Jordan had been fitted with an intrauterine device. Suspecting that a lover may have been involved in Jordan’s death, Ellie looks first at the local boys who flirted their ways into Jordan’s heart and then to the men of Tufts, who may have offered her more mature enticements. At every step, Ellie finds frustration: from her rival at the Republic; from locals who don’t want to believe their golden girl may have strayed from the righteous path; and most of all, from a murderer who would kill again to avoid being unmasked.

You can’t help rooting for tenacious Ellie, who has the grit to know when she’s right and the grace to admit when she’s wrong.