Former New York Times reporter Jack McMorrow has opted for the quiet life of rural Maine. He's still trying to figure out what to do with his life when an old friend contacts him with a proposition for an upscale New England magazine article. With his money dwindling and inertia setting in, McMorrow agrees. But what starts as a simple assignment rapidly turns his peaceful existence upside down. His research on unwed teenage mothers uncovers the one success story in an otherwise grim picture: a teenage mother named Missy Hewitt who gave her daughter up for adoption. But within twenty-four hours Missy is found dead. The facts don't add up and McMorrow is left with only questions. Who arranged for the adoption? Where is Missy's baby? And who has a reason to kill to keep all these questions unanswered?
Like many crime novelists I began my writing career in newspapers--the best training ground ever. After Colby College, I knocked around, including stints as a roofer, a postman, and a manuscript reader at a big New York publisher (thumbs up for the roofer gig, thumbs down on the publishing job).
My first reporting job was with a weekly in the paper mill town of Rumford, Maine. It was there that I left my sweaty mark on high-school wrestling coverage. But there was lots of small-town crime in Rumford. I would later mine my Rumford time for my first novel, DEADLINE.
After a few months it was on to the daily Waterville, Maine Morning Sentinel, where editors gave me a thrice-weekly column and I wrote about stuff I saw in police stations, courtrooms, in the towns and cities of Maine.
And all the while I was making up stories on the side, typing away on a Smith-Corona electric typewriter.
DEADLINE came out in 1993and the books came steadily after that. McMorrow and I grew up together, though at different rates.. I continue to live in a small village in central Maine, making regular trips for book research. My deal with Jack: I'll send him into some pretty dangerous places, but I'll scout them out first. I walk point; Jack has my back. Brandon Blake and I are still feeling each other out.
