Title: Silenced Girls
Author(s) Name(s): Roger Stelljes
Published in: April, 2019
Why You Might Like This Book: Read this book if you enjoy
- fast-paced thrillers,
- cold cases,
- murder mystery,
- unsolved cases,
- female protagonists,
- suspenseful plots, and
- serial killer stories.
Who Should Avoid This Book: Avoid this book if you are triggered by or dislike
- stalking,
- murder,
- sexual violence and sexual assault,
- domestic violence,
- kidnapping, or
- grief and loss.
The story starts with a flashback from twenty years ago in Manchester Bay. Victoria “Tori” Hunter and Jessica “Jessie” Hunter were seventeen-year-old identical twins living in Manchester with their family. They were always together, shared everything, were protective of each other, and played soccer together as part of their team, too. Jessie was always the extroverted, outgoing type who had several boyfriends, whereas Tori was the quiet, reserved one. Jessie had set Tori up with her first boyfriend Jason. It was the fourth of July and each year on this day there would be a big party and the town would attract a lot of party goers. The girls were excited. There were their best friend Katy Anderson, Jason, and Jake Williams, whom they all called “Steak” waiting for them. Their soccer teammates Mickey Olson, Corinne Whitworth and Lizzy Cowger were also there. There were over twenty of them hanging out that evening. “Rance”, the guy Jessie was interested in may or may not have shown up. And there were thousands of others there. They all had some vodka, as suggested by Steak, watched the fireworks show, Tori and Jason kissed each other, then when he asked her if she wanted to be alone with him, she agreed, so the two left, and that was the last Tori saw of her sister that evening. Jessie had gone missing.
Agent Johnson was the investigating officer, who sat along with Cal Lund to interview Tori. She felt comfortable with Cal, her dad’s (Sheriff Big Jim Hunter) best friend at work. Johnson sounded accusatory and made her feel guilty, as he probed her asking what Jason and she had been doing all by themselves, where they went, when she got back home, and such until she cried. Tori learned from her father that moment that Jessie’s car was found abandoned on a highway, with a flat tire, she had dropped off Katy and must have been on her way back home, and her purse and keys were missing. Twenty months later, her father died. Tori left Manchester Bay after that and never returned and Jessie was never found.
Twenty years later, in 2019, in Manchester Bay, a twenty-seven-year-old, rich and highly attractive woman named Genevieve Lash was being stalked by a man. He had been following her, taking notes, and had planned it all out. When she was away at Mannion’s on the fourth of July, he had slashed her car’s tyre, and waited for her. Observing her and her friend Tessie Joyner from a distance, late in the night, when the lady started driving, he followed her car, and Genevieve herself wasn’t yet aware that her car’s tyre won’t last long. It was also a bad weather day and a storm was expected to arrive soon. Just like he had planned, the car had stopped on the county road, she stood there alone and it began raining. He drove close to her car and innocently greeted her. The two knew each other, he was no stranger, so when he offered to help, she accepted thankfully. The next day, Genevieve Lash’s parents Jerry and Dorothy Lash had filed a missing person’s case. Will Braddock, Chief Detective for the Shepard County Sheriff’s Department, his partner Sherley Eggleston, and his best detective Jake Williams, aka “Steak” were investigating the case. A case almost similar to what had happened twenty years before with Jessie Hunter.
Tori had changed a lot in all these years away from home. She had become a fierce, outspoken, bold woman, unlike her shy, quiet younger self. In New York, she had developed a strong career profile working with the FBI. This was not what she had in mind when she lost her family, but when a young girl child was abducted in broad daylight and the case became public, Tori was involved in the case, and later the girl child returned home. After that incident, she applied for a role at the FBI, became part of the FBI’s Child Abduction Rapid Deployment team (CARD), solved a few high-profile child abduction cases, and became a star in their unit.
On what seems to be another normal day, Tori comes back to her condo apartment after her morning run, receives a load of mail from her apartment’s doorman, then unexpectedly finds an envelope with no return address but it was sent from Manchester Bay. She opens it and is shocked to find a clip of an old newspaper article covering her sister’s abduction and a note pinned to it telling her to check out Genevieve Lash’s case. She checks out the case, finds the similarities, and learns from her friend Ruby at the FBI that there are no prints on the letter pointing to any suspect. The letter was mailed to her on the 3rd of July, a day before the abduction, which means that it was all pre-planned, and the abduction of Genevieve happened on the twentieth anniversary of her sister’s abduction. She realizes that her sister’s killer wants to play a game, and she is ready, so she leaves to her hometown.
When Tori reaches her hometown, the first thing she notices is how much the town has developed in all these years! At the Shepard County Government Center, she meets familiar faces like Cal and Steak and learns that Detective Will Braddock is the one handling the investigation. Steak reports to Will and Will reports to Cal, and Will may not be an easy guy to work with, they say. When she connects with Will, he says that he does not think that the two cases are connected even if there are many similarities because there are also differences. He suspects that someone could be using the old Jessie Hunter case as a distraction to hide the truth behind the latest case, to make everyone think that the two cases are indeed connected, when they need not be, that Genevieve might have been kidnapped or killed to target her rich father Jerry Lash or to cover up some crime or secret about his business. Tori wasn’t expecting it but Will happens to be highly logical, very smart, and quite confrontational himself, so they have a bit of an argument about what’s the possible truth, but she agrees to work with him on his terms. They both are convinced that Genevieve is no longer just a missing person but she is dead.
Soon, Tori connects with people she had known twenty years before, even if it is a bit awkward after twenty years. Most people there know one another, especially among those who hung out at or around the last place Genevieve was seen. That means that exactly like with her sister’s case, there are lots of people involved, and the cops cannot find anyone with any particular motive to abduct or assault the victim. With the chief detective having a theory different from her own, with no actual leads to follow, with lots of people found in the vicinity and no clear suspects, will Tori be able to identify and catch the criminal? Is the criminal in Genevieve’s case also the one who abducted and probably killed her sister Jessie decades before? Were these two victims killed? What was the motive? Are they two separate cases or is the kilelr the same person? Tori is determined to find all the answers, while reconnecting with her friends from the past in her hometown, still processing the loss of her sister and father, and she does not yet know that the killer has started following her. As the two start working and uncover more, some unexpected tragedies happen, adding further pressure and more confusion regarding who killed these girls.
Silenced Girls is a page-turning thriller novel, so it is no wonder that the book has been a best-seller that is loved by lots of thriller fans. This is only the first book in the Agent Tori Hunter series. Here and there, the pace may slow down a bit and the ending may not be unpredictable, but mostly, Roger Stelljes keeps the reader engaged with a fast or at least even pace. If you like serial killer plots that have complete stories with writing that keeps you effortlessly interested and if you can overlook some logical flaws, you should give this a try. I would give this a 3.8-star rating.
