Death Notice
Todd Ritter
Perry Hollow, Pennsylvania, has never had a murder. At least not as long as Kat Campbell has been police chief. And the first is brutal. George Winnick, a farmer in his sixties, is found in a homemade coffin on the side of the highway with his lips sewn shut and his veins and arteries drained of blood and filled with embalming fluid. Chilling as that is, it becomes even more so when Kat finds that the Perry Hollow Gazette obituary writer, Henry Goll, received a death notice for Winnick before he was killed.Soon after, the task force from the Pennsylvania Bureau of Investigation shows up and everything takes an irreversible turn for the worse. Nick Donnelly, head of the task force, has been chasing the “Betsy Ross Killer,” so named because he’s handy with a needle and thread, for more than a year. Winnick seems to be his fourth victim. Or is he?Kat has never handled a murder case before, but she’s not about to sit by while someone terrorizes her sleepy little town or her own son. But will her efforts be enough to stop a killer and bring calm to Perry Hollow?A portrait of a small town in turmoil, where residents fear for their lives, Todd Ritter’s Death Notice is a gripping debut from a terrific new talent in crime fiction.
TODD RITTER
Death Notice
Copyright
Avon
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London, SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
This paperback edition 2011
First published by Minotaur Books, an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Ltd., New York, 2010
Copyright © Todd Ritter 2010.
Todd Ritter asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Source ISBN: 9781847562951
Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2011 ISBN: 9781847562968
Version: 2014–12–16
Dedication
To Mike, for everything
Table of Contents
Title Page (#u754c558f-c7d6-5983-ae9e-efbf70d9edb2)
Copyright (#ucb19b1ff-390f-5979-bba1-4bdae0a85aeb)
Dedication (#u1661b595-7e0f-51e4-ab37-acd95de1094f)
Prologue (#ua4fe25d7-55a9-53ba-bec0-0c44857409d5)
March (#u3927d1d0-2fad-56cc-a3c0-2790a84524f3)
One (#u3e2a479f-2cab-504b-8477-a7c2e6f7eb37)
Two (#ud06f0a5a-ddcd-5458-a221-dffe3b40175f)
Three (#ua66007c6-7c73-517c-8f14-1c14df71b7bb)
Four (#u73c1bdd8-41ad-5461-88a6-8a53a58c00d4)
Five (#u0505e06b-6b41-545f-a6ba-b624c924ef12)
Six (#uccacb227-6fae-5480-8cc1-1e6de51db52a)
Seven (#ubc118106-51b3-5bc6-b1a8-20abdebfbfd7)
Eight (#u2d4a6aa8-677a-5442-8247-24fc98747e4f)
Nine (#u92e248a2-84f7-59d8-ac47-181b8949fcfc)
Ten (#u5f914b5f-abb2-56d4-9283-54a4edf0fb40)
Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
July (#litres_trial_promo)
Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)