Shadow Image: A Thriller

by Martin J. Smith

This chilling legal thriller that brings readers into the depths of human memory “hooks you . . . right through to the last page” (Michael Connelly, New York Times–bestselling author of The Black Box).   For generations the Underhill family has dominated Pennsylvania politics. Now, with their youngest son locked in a tight gubernatorial race, a simple accident threatens to derail the entire campaign.   Floss Underhill, the family’s elderly matriarch, has been discovered alive after falling from a gazebo into a ravine, and Brenna Kennedy gets brought in as a defense attorney for the family. The police don’t think her fall was an accident—and soon neither does Kennedy.   Kennedy’s partner, psychologist and memory expert Jim Christensen, has been studying Floss Underhill for months in a group of Alzheimer’s patients. Her mind ravaged by the disease, her body broken by the fall, Floss Underhill nevertheless knows something, and is trying to tell Christensen a family secret so explosive it could bring down an empire.   But to bring the truth out, Kennedy and Christensen will have to face some powerful enemies in this twisting mystery-thriller from an author who “may well become a thriller force to be reckoned with” (James Ellroy, New York Times–bestselling author of L.A. Confidential).

421 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 8, 2013

About the author

Author Martin J. Smith was editor-in-chief of the monthly Orange Coast magazine from 2007 to 2016, and a former senior editor of the Los Angeles Times Magazine. He wrote three crime novels, "Time Release," "Shadow Image," and the Edgar Award-nominated "Straw Men," before turning his writing energy to nonfiction books, including "Oops: 20 Life Lessons from the Fiascoes That Shaped America," "Poplorica: A Popular History of the Fads, Mavericks, Inventions and Lore That Shaped Modern America" (both with co-author Patrick J. Kiger), and "The Wild Duck Chase," upon which the award-winning documentary film "The Million Dollar Duck" is based. Diversion Books published his fourth series novel, "The Disappeared Girl," in March 2014, and released his first stand-alone suspense-thriller, "Combustion," in September 2016. Globe Pequot published his collection of journalistic essays about the people, places, and peculiarities of the American Southwest, "Mr. Las Vegas Has a Bad Knee," on Nov. 1, 2017. His latest nonfiction book is "Going to Trinidad: A Doctor, a Colorado Town, and Stories from an Unlikely Gender Crossroads," which Bower House and Tantor Media will publish in April 2021. Smith lives in Granby, Colorado.