When local police and federal agents fail to find two girls, a frustrated Pond family turns to one of their own: Linda O'Neal. O'Neal, step-grandmother to Ashley Pond and a private invenstigator, is sent on a wild chase after clues and suspects. But after stake-outs and fact-finding, her hunches all lead to one culprit — a supsect police aren't looking at. Now, O'Neal must do whateaver it takes to bring the perpetrator to justice and find the truth behind two missing girls.
When 12-year-old Ashley Pond disappeared on the way to school in January 2002, her family and community were thrust into the nightmare of a child abduction case that had literally nowhere to go and few, if any, clues as to the victim's fate. The following spring, another girl, Ashley's classmate Miranda Gaddis, also disappeared, from the same bus stop that Ashley had used. Seeming to leave no stone unturned, law-enforcement officials from various agencies couldn't make headway in either case, and the horror of hosting a serial abductor engulfed the community. Enter Ashley's step-grandmother, private investigator O'Neal. Her intensive investigation, full of arcane turns and investigative dead ends, eventually gained traction. Following her professional judgment and a rasher of hunches, she homed in on a suspect who had previously eluded police attention. Persevering when less-committed investigators reasonably may have given up, she continued searching and eventually brought a heinous and pitiful, though certainly not pitiable, culprit to justice. A by-the-numbers true-crime yarn made greatly more urgent by the main investigator's familial tie. Mike Tribby
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