Poetic Justice

"THIS IS BEACH HAVEN, NOT THE BIG CITY; WE HAVE OUR OWN WAY OF DOING THINGS. WE DON’T NEED OUTSIDERS BUTTING IN, TRYING TO CHANGE THINGS." Lewis Porter was an outsider – asked by the local police to examine a murder scene because of his past…work experience. It was experience that he was more than happy to keep right where he left it: in the past. But people’s pasts have a funny way of catching up with them. A string of mysterious disappearances of amateur poetesses in the sleepy New Jersey shore town of 1930s Beach Haven bring Porter out of self-imposed retirement and lead him from the beaches to the Pinelands in search of an answer and a killer – a killer who makes it personal. Porter finds more than death: beneath the sand and the trees runs a foul, hidden sewer of sin in which society’s highest and lowest swim – all of whom have a stake in keeping their dirty truths from seeing light. And Porter is holding open the manhole cover. It’s a case that not everyone wants solved – except Porter. The question is, will he finish the case before it finishes him? “Ever seen a dead man?” I was looking at one.

Thomas Reeder grew up outside Philadelphia, addicted to late night B movies, "Shock Theater" and any silent film that would occasionally surface. A lifelong love of all things cinematic led to a BFA in Film at New York's School of Visual Arts and an MA in Cinema Studies at New York University. Concurrent with this was an immersion in the written word from a disparate array of authors of mysteries that ran the gamut from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and S.S. Van Dine, to Mickey Spillane and Lawrence Block. Mr. Reeder's biography of film producer Ben Pivar - "Stop Yellin': Ben Pivar and the Horror, Mystery and Action Adventure Films of His Universal B Unit" - was published in 2011, and he has written numerous articles for film and genealogical periodicals. His biography of silent comedy pioneer Henry "Pathé" Lehrman is scheduled for publication in 2016. "Poetic Justice" is his first foray into fiction, inspired in part by his love for Long Beach Island, where he spends his summers. Mr. Reeder lives in Hopewell, New Jersey, with his family.