Kindred: A Maddie Ward Crime Story

by John Hogan

On a sunny August morning in Northeastern Pennsylvania, two-year-old Carey Simon is murdered and abducted by a pack of dogs as her mother fights vainly for Carey's life. Maddie Ward is the detective assigned to investigate. It is the first case she will be heading, and she is confident but anxious. When she arrives on the scene, she meets the local police chief who lives up to his reputation for male chauvinism. As she examines evidence around the scene, a local tracker arrives, and adamantly claims the attack was perpetrated by wild coyotes, even though they are vanishingly rare in that area. The tracker’s claim is resoundingly refuted when a few weeks later Carey’s cousin, who lives miles away, is attacked. Discerning the motive and identifying the perpetrator of these crimes will take Maddie on a labyrinthine journey through three sister’s experiences in the rural orphanage where they grew up, Maddie’s own family’s past, and into the forbidding tunnels of a forgotten coal mine. While she assiduously follows these clues to their bizarre end, Maddie discovers a web of connections and ties that just might kill her.

404 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 31, 2021