A Murderous Innocence

by Susan Oleksiw

Overview

When Ron Faroli is put to rest in Mellingham, Chief of Police Joe Silva knows more trouble will follow. Soon after the funeral, one of Ron's friends is found dead after a fall from a third-floor window. Although Joe finds no evidence of foul play, he is reluctant to write off Miles Stine's death as an accident.

Swirling around the small Community Center are stories about the two dead men, their lives on and off drugs, and the small coterie of struggling addicts they called their friends. The death of two of their number threatens the little stability some of them have managed to hold on to, and unexpected friendships emerge in the crucible of fear.

Joe knows the dead men's parents, and finds himself deeply sympathetic as he investigates the second death. George Faroli has been Joe's poker buddy for years, and Edna Stine, mother of the second victim, has been a fixture in town all her life, struggling to make a better life for her children.

Complicating his investigations are his feelings for Gwen McDuffy and her two children. Now that he and Gwen are living together, Joe finds it harder to remain objective when drugs threaten to invade the small family he now calls his own. Philip, Gwen's younger child, hangs out with a crowd of bored, hyped-up teens, trying desperately to fit in. Fearing the worst for her child, Gwen turns to Joe.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940045256797
Publisher:	Susan Oleksiw
Publication date:	09/02/2013
Series:	A Mellingham Mystery
Sold by:	Smashwords
Format:	eBook
File size:	303 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Susan Oleksiw writes the Anita Ray series featuring Indian American photographer Anita Ray, who has appeared in two books, Under the Eye of Kali (2010) and The Wrath of Shiva (2012). She also writes the Mellingham series featuring Chief of Police Joe Silva (Murder in Mellingham, 1993, is the first book in the series), now available in all eBook formats.

Susan compiled A Reader’s Guide to the Classic British Mystery (1988), after spending years and years reading crime fiction and taking notes. Talking about her favorite books with friends just wasn't enough, so she offered her list of books to a publisher.

Susan was consulting editor for The Oxford Companion to Crime and Mystery Writing (1999), which is a wonderful reference on all sorts of topics related to crime fiction.

In addition to writing and reviewing crime fiction, Oleksiw was a co-founder of Level Best Books, which continues to thrive under new ownership, and The Larcom Press, which published The Larcom Review and a number of mysteries before its founders decided to move on to other challenges.

Susan lives and writes in Massachusetts with her husband, Michael Oleksiw, an award-winning photographer.

Editorial Reviews

A quiet New England seaside town cannot escape the consequences of drug addiction. The drug culture has deep roots, even in peaceful Mellingham. So police chief Joe Silva (Friends and Enemies, 2001, etc.), an old friend of George and Paul Faroli well aware of their son Ron's addiction, isn't shocked when Ron overdoses on OxyContin. But Joe does become suspicious when Ron's buddy Miles Stine falls to his death. Both men were just out of rehab and supposedly clean, and their deaths make several other young men from their Community Center group very nervous. The investigation becomes more personal when Joe's girlfriend Gwen McDuffy shares her fears for her teenaged son Philip, a pleasant teen turned rude and surly. Following the trail of drugs, Joe discovers that Miles's mother had a prescription for OxyC. His fall was probably caused by the mixture of two drugs that together caused hallucinations. When Joe discovers the body of another of Ron's friends buried in the woods, he realizes that someone is out to eliminate the drug users. His discovery of Philip's secret helps focus his feelings for Gwen and leads to a marriage proposal, a bright spot in an otherwise painful case. As usual, Oleksiw provides more talk than action in this somber tale of substance abuse. But you can't help feeling for the sympathetically drawn characters, who could be your neighbors.

Kirkus Reviews