West's Evil Story
Bruce Von Stiers
Meredith Laughlin gets a call from her husband. He is on his cell phone and she can hardly make out what he is saying. All of a sudden, something is happening in the background and the phone goes dead. Did something terrible just happen? This is the beginning of Nine Days to Evil, a mystery novel by Nancy Glass West.
You get the feeling from the first that this is not just your average missing person mystery. Ms. West gives you a lot of things to think about. Meredith is not just your average doting doctor's wife. She is smart and the people surrounding her really care about her. They too want to find out what happened to her husband Conrad. And the cops think that Meredith is making way too much of the whole thing.
After Conrad disappears, Meredith tries to find out where he was going. He was on staff at the Methodist University hospital and made stops at maternity clinics in the areas surrounding San Antonio . It was on the way to one of these stops that Conrad disappeared.
Meredith gets support and help from Key Walker and his wife, Claire. Key and Conrad worked together at the hospital and were both up for the chair in their department. Meredith also gets support from her parents and a new friend named Agatha Mundeen.
The cop investigating Conrad's disappearance is somewhat unusual. Slow and plodding, Sam Vanderhoven has his own set of problems. He came from the Chicago area with a lot of emotional baggage. Can he be truly effective in this investigation?
The book gives the reader the entire story broken down over a nine day period. Hence the title of the book. There are forty-eight chapters in the book and it has 306 pages. It is soft covered and was published by Booklocker.
As the book progresses, we find that the idyllic life that Meredith portrays for her and Conrad isn't exactly true. He has disappeared before and something about his life prior to Meredith is shrouded in mystery.
The characters interact well here and the author adds some interesting plot devices to tie Vanderhoven to Meredith and her new friend Agatha.
The storyline of a missing husband who isn't what everybody thought isn't exactly new. But Nancy Glass West brings a different and interesting approach to the idea. Meredith is strong and wants to get to the bottom of all of this. If Conrad is truly missing, why can't they find him? And if he is up to no good, will she be able to survive the fallout?
Nine Days to Evil got an endorsement from a top notch mystery writer, Barbara D'Amato. She calls this book “a fascinating tale of betrayal and deception.” I agree with that. I also think that the author made the characters seem real and the situations very intense. You really don't get the true picture of what's going on until nearly the end. That makes for a great read.
Nine Days to Evil is available through Booklocker, Amazon or Barnes and Noble.
© 2004 Bruce E Von Stiers