Kate Wilhelm The Price of Silence

The Price of Silence

Kate Wilhelm

Mira, Oct 2005, $23.95

ISBN: 0778322165

Having lost her job and knowing that her beloved spouse Barney has two years to go on his dissertation, Oregonian Todd Fielding obtains work on the Brindle Times as the newspaper's octogenarian owner Ruth Ann Coleman knows her paper needs a computer expert journalist. Though on the other side of the mountain from where Barney attends school and teaches, Todd accepts the position that comes with a rent free house. Barney's faculty advisor arranges his schedule so that they can spend most of each week together.

Todd and Ruth Ann become close confidents as the newcomer's work and ethics are excellent. When a high school girl Jodie Schuster vanishes, Todd questions the local cops who blow her off insisting she is just another bored teen runaway. Todd investigates further and soon finds a shocking pattern of missing teenage females over recent years with law enforcement doing nothing except yawning. With Ruth Ann providing an identical but much older pattern of disappearances, the two women investigate not realizing the danger from a town icon who wants his predatory nature to remain secret.

This is a terrific amateur sleuth tale that enables the audience to first appreciate the strong relationships between Todd and Barney (in spite of a sexual female prowler), and Todd and Ruth Ann (the "cold" air and the recognition the paper is the elderly woman's "baby"). Once the tale switches to the amateurs sleuth investigation, fans obtain a fantastic mystery as the two journalists struggle to uncover who is behind the abductions of recent note and who got away with the first generation killings under the watch of Ruth Ann's late father. Kate Wilhelm writes a terrific thriller that hopefully will have sequels set in Brindle, Oregon.

Harriet Klausner