When small-town librarian Mallory Mills encounters a strange homeless woman sleeping in her library she is touched to find that the mysterious woman may be her sister, and horrified to hear the chief of police denounce the woman as a dangerous sociopath. If he is right about Thora McNeill, Mallory is in danger of losing all her money and possibly her life. If the story Thora tells is true, Chief Barker is a murderous pedophile with designs on his fiancee's little girls. Before Mallory discovers who (if anyone) can be trusted to tell the truth she finds out some startling things about her own family, and even about herself.
Kate Gallison was born in Philadelphia and grew up reading mystery stories, from Nancy Drew to the lurid paperbacks her mother kept on the bottom shelf in the sunroom. Over the years she has worked for the Washington Post, John Wanamaker's department store, the State of New Jersey, and two large software houses in Princeton, New Jersey. When she started writing mysteries of her own, the characters and the politics in these workplaces were all grist to her mill.
Kate has three grown sons and a bachelor's degree in humanities from Thomas Edison College. She lives in Lambertville with her musician husband and their cat.
Kate's mysteries are always full of unexpected plot twists, which is one reason I like her work. I can never quite figure out what will happen next. This one spends more time at the beginning establishing the characters or speculating about them, but once the plot accelerates, just who the characters are behind various facades becomes critical, well worth that up-front time. The plot--well, enjoy.