SILENCE OF THE MISSING Written by a True Crime Junkie

 

Dear Reader:

Does true crime fascinate you? It’s always been a somewhat dubious pleasure of mine. Dubious because I wonder why I’m drawn to stories of murder, abduction, and other dastardly deeds my fellow humans perpetrate on each other.

Whatever the reason, trying to gain some understanding of human nature is a passion of mine, whether it’s for the best humanity has to offer or the worst.

SILENCE OF THE MISSING gives readers a glimpse into both the darkness and the light, the good and the evil. I was inspired by missing persons’ cases where the result was not the typical and tragic ending of finding a body. What would happen if a missing person returned many years later? What effect would it have on loved ones? Was there a possibility that the person claiming to be the missing soul was actually an imposter? What happened during those intervening years when family and friends worried and, most likely, gave up on their vanished loved one?

 These questions, along with some significant true-crime cases, inspired me to write SILENCE OF THE MISSING.

I wanted to write something haunting, something that would draw you, the reader in, with the same burning questions that kept me up at night.

All good fiction, I believe starts off with the classic question of—what if? It’s obvious my what-if was, “What if your first love was abducted and turned up years later when you and everyone you knew believed he was dead?”

 I wondered further—what if this person wasn’t who he said he was? Or maybe, even better or worse, what if he was?

 SILENCE OF THE MISSING opens with the appearance of the missing person—a shocking event that disrupts a very ordinary day and an ordinary life. The appearance changes everything and plunges Sam, our main character, into a world he can no longer trust or perhaps even believe.

 Was Sam’s long-lost love who he said he was? And why appear now, over thirty years later?

 Read SILENCE OF THE MISSING and find out.

 The answers may not be as simple, or as innocent, as you may first believe.

 Your conspirator in truth and fiction,

Rick R. Reed

ABOUT THE BOOK

He went into the woods…and never came out.

In 1986, thirteen-year-old Jeb Kleber vanished during his small town’s Fourth of July fireworks. His mysterious disappearance left his first love, Sammy Blake, grieving for years.

Flash forward to present day. A now middle-aged Sam Blake has a comfortable and predictable life with his husband Marc in Chicago. All that changes when a stranger arrives at Sam’s door, claiming to be the missing Jeb Kleber. The stranger knows things he couldn’t possibly know—including the hidden love the boys shared during the summer of ’86. He also wears an amethyst pendant Sam gave him shortly before he disappeared.

Could this be the real Jeb Kleber, missing for thirty-seven years? If not, who is this mysterious stranger? And what does he want after all this time? His appearance plunges Sam’s life into a nightmare of questionable identity, long-buried secrets, and perhaps even murder.

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Pick up your copy (availble in ebook, paperback, and audiobook): https://www.amazon.com/Silence-Missing-gripping-psychological-thriller-ebook/dp/B0C4M7TKQV