In The Devil’s Hour, Laura Cardinal finds herself enmeshed in a cold case—a very cold case. A young girl went missing many years before, then surfaced as a young adult. She returned to her family, but she was a very different person from the child who disappeared.
Department of Public Safety detective, Laura Cardinal, meanwhile, was looking into a string of cold cases regarding missing and dead girls. Back at the time of Micaela Brashear’s disappearance, two other girls had gone missing and were found dead. Did the same killer take all of the girls? And if so, how did Micaela survive?
Detective Laura Cardinal wondered how Micaela had survived such horrific circumstances.
Now, a similar story has turned up in real life. Richard Wayne Landers Jr. was only five years old when he disappeared. He turned up nineteen years later, living in Minnesota under another name. Cases like this inspired me to write The Devil’s Hour.
Did his grandparents spirit him away from his family? They were prosecuted on a felony charge of kidnapping, but the charge was dropped due to lack of evidence. Nineteen years later, Richard Wayne Landers was found in Long Prairie, Minnesota. How was he found? Through his Social Security number and matching birthdate.
The question that intrigues me most: how was the path taken different from the path that young man walked as a child? How did that bear on the personality of the man he had become?
Regarding the return of Michaela Brashear—and the other girls who were killed around the time she disappeared–you’ll just have to read The Devil’s Hour to find out how it ends. A story ripped from the headlines.
Categories: Laura Cardinal The Devil's Hour
