What Aunt Agatha is Reading -- Bad Moon Launches Today

It's 1969 and Neil Armstrong is putting man's first footprints on the moon.  In rural Pennsylvania, ten-year-old Charlie Olmstead is so captivated by this historic event, he jumps on his bike amd heads out into the dark night, hoping to get a better look at the moon.  Charlie is never seen again.

Perry Hollow Police Chief Jim Campbell later finds the boy's bicycle at Sunset Falls and everyone assumes Charlie fell in the water and drowned.  Everyone except his mother, that is.  She's certain that he was abducted and she spends the rest of her life searching for clues to his whereabouts.

Years later, Eric Olmstead, now a famous author, returns to Perry Hollow to bury his mother and fulfill her last wish --- find out what happened to his brother Charlie.  Eric looks for help from the current police chief, Kat Campbell, who just happens to be Jim Campbell's daughter and Eric's high school sweetheart.  Together they learn that Mrs. Olstead's obsessive search for her son led her to uncover other disappearances in the area.  Charlie wasn't the only victim!

Bad Moon is the second in the Kat Campbell series and I must say I'm enjoying it tremendously.  From the first page the reader is drawn into this web of small town deception and lies.  The characters are well-defined, the dialog is snappy, and Ritter's plotting is fast paced.  Placing the story against the backdrop of the moon landings of the sixties and seventies is an absorbing ploy that gives a surprising spin to the story.

Todd Ritter will be out on his Magical Mystery Tour in the next couple of months.  Check his website to see if he'll be appearing at a town near you.