And Then She Was Gone - Softcover

McBride, Susan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1878044613 ISBN 13: 9781878044617

Publisher: Mayhaven Pub, 1999

Synopsis

It wasn't supposed to happen in Litchfield. Beneath the bright Texas sun, a child vanishes without a trace. Detective Maggie Ryan had left the Dallas P.D. in order to escape big city crime, and now it had followed her outside the city limits, reminding her that no one was safe. Not even behind a locked door.

About this title

From the Back Cover

Although Susan McBride has written for a number of years, AND THEN SHE WAS GONE is her first novel and the recipient of Mayhaven Publishing's First Annual Award for Fiction. AND THEN SHE WAS GONE was also a finalist in the St. Martin's Press Best First Traditional Mystery Novel Contest and won the National Writer's Association's Best Novel Contest. A Journalism graduate of the University of Kansas, the author is presently at work on another mystery featuring Maggie Ryan.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Her headlamps cutting through the pitch, Maggie glanced around her as she drove, at empty fields with construction signs announcing new subdivisions soon to come, at houses that followed after, neatly set side-by-side, gas lamps casting pale light across well-tended lawns.

She frowned, going over the bits and pieces Phillips had told her on the phone. A four-year-old named Carrie Spencer was missing. Her mother had taken her to the park for the afternoon, and the child had vanished into thin air.

Litchfield was considered a safe place to live. The overpasses didn't yet have graffiti. Parks were clean. Schools didn't need metal detectors or off-duty police patrol. There hadn't been a single homicide in the past two years Maggie had been on the force, which had only two dozen sworn officers and trained citizens on its payroll, hardly as big as some girl scout troops.

But that didn't mean something couldn't happen here. Texas was a state full of little towns where murder was something read about in the papers until a quiet Luby's cafeteria became a shooting gallery for a lunatic with an automatic weapon. Then it was all too real.

She slowed the car as she passed the park, its grounds dimly-lit. Groups of picnic tables sat beneath trees hardly tall enough to shade them. Jungle gyms, swingsets and teeter-totters crowded a small playground partially carpeted with cedar chips.

Small groups of people wandered around, flashlights glowing in the dark like fireflies. A patrol car eased by her, cruising the perimeter....Carrie had disappeared in broad daylight. She was wearing purple overalls, a pink shirt and pink tennis shoes with pink bows tied around her pigtails. Soccer games were in progress just across the field. Children swarmed the playground. Teenagers jumped the curbs on rollerblades and skateboards. Mothers clustered around nearby picnic tables to gossip.

Maggie doubted very much the girl had just wandered off...more than likely she'd been led away. The question was by whom. Someone she knew? A stranger? Though either seemed hard enough to believe.

This was Litchfield. It there were any perverts roaming the streets, they hid their secrets well behind their Polo-shirted and Cole Haan-shod, oh-so-polished demeanors.

Edition details

• Publisher: Mayhaven Pub
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1878044613
• ISBN 13: 9781878044617
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 238