Breaking News ~ Susan Page Davis ~ Giveaway

Breaking News

by Susan Page Davis

Image courtesy pixabay.com

 What inspired this book?

In the 1920s, Judge Joseph Crater owned a summer cottage in Belgrade, Maine, my hometown. Judge Crater’s disappearance in 1930 was considered the missing persons case of the century.

After reading about Judge Crater’s case, I considered writing a book about it. Instead, after much thought, I decided to write a novel instead. The story is not about Judge Crater but was inspired by his story.

Writing about fictional characters is always easier than writing about real people. You can make them act and speak any way you wish. And you can resolve a mystery in any of several ways, rather than sticking to history.

Rather than confine myself to the facts of the judge’s true case, I decided to place a later disappearance in the same location, this time making the person who vanished a senator.

By moving the event to 1968, I was able to tell the story in a contemporary setting through the eyes of middle-aged people who remembered the event. I created a family, the Fairmonts, who lived near the senator’s cottage, and a pair of kind neighbors—news editor Kurt Borden and his wife, Janet—to get involved.

Kurt sees the mystery unfold from the official perspective when his reporter, Mick Tyler, goes to write a story about the senator and ends up missing, too. Kurt deals with the police and the news staff covering the story. Janet sees it from a more personal angle. She gets to know the elderly neighbor’s children—adults now, but boys and girls when the senator vanished. Piece by piece, Kurt and Janet solve the mystery of the two disappearances.

My main characters in this book have deep faith in God. Because of this, I was able to bring the story to a much more satisfying conclusion, in my opinion, that Judge Crater’s story.

In real life, we don’t always see the solution to mysteries we encounter. I hope you will enjoy Breaking News and the ways Kurt and Janet find to help their friends, neighbors, and coworkers with the problems they suffer because of an old crime.

When news editor Kurt Borden sends his star reporter out to do a story on a senator who disappeared more than 40 years ago, the reporter goes missing too. 

Kurt’s wife, Janet, finds an elderly neighbor ill in his home. The old man begs her to give a cryptic message to his grown children. Could the two mysterious events in small-town Maine be connected? 

To help unravel the mystery, Kurt and Janet must rely on their faith and use all their wits and diplomatic skills.

Susan Page Davis is the author of more than 80 books, in the mystery, suspense, and historical romance categories. She is a past winner of the Carol Award, the Faith, Hope, two Love Readers’ Choice Awards, and two Will Rogers Medallions. A Maine native, she now lives in western Kentucky with her husband Jim.

Contact Info/Social Media Links:

·       Website: www.susanpagedavis.com

·       Twitter: @SusanPageDavis

·       Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/susanpagedavisauthor

Giveaway: Susan will give either a paperback (US only, please) or an ebook copy of Breaking News. To Enter, simply leave a comment below with your contact information. Giveaway ends one week from today on Thursday, September 6, 2018, at Midnight Central Time.

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