The Confessional

A small-town police raid goes wrong. A fifteen-year-old boy is killed in his own bedroom - unarmed, eating breakfast, reading a book he'll never finish.
The department calls it procedure. The report calls him a suspect. The evidence starts disappearing before the body is cold.
But inside the town's only church, a different kind of reckoning begins.
Father Elijah Cole - a reformed ex-con turned priest with a past he's buried and a covenant he can't break - becomes the keeper of confessions from every side of the fallout. A young officer haunted by what he saw and what he chose not to say. A veteran detective building a case that could end her career. A grieving drug kingpin baptized in the same water his fury is rising from. And a corrupt detective who will burn the town down before he lets the truth surface.
As the confessions multiply, so does the danger. The seal of the confessional protects every secret Elijah holds - but it also traps him inside a silence that's becoming indistinguishable from complicity. The more he knows, the less he can do. And the clock is running out for everyone.
Set in the fictional Southern town of Jacob's Crossing, The Confessional is a high-stakes crime drama about corruption, redemption, faith under fire, and the cost of carrying other people's truths. It is a story about what happens when the only man who knows everything is the one man who can never speak.

Darryl Wayne Townsend Jr. is the author of seventeen books spanning literary fiction, thrillers, novellas, and nonfiction. His work lives in the spaces between people - the things they can't say, the things they won't say, and the things they say to the wrong person. His novels include Still Water, Rare Pull, Taylor, Glass Empire, and Heavy Load. His nonfiction includes The Catalog Mindset and Don't Blow the Bag. He is the founder of Polymath Portfolio Group LLC and hosts the podcast Wait a Minute, Bitch on Spotify. He lives in Seattle. He is not done.