Shadow of a Doubt by Nancy Silverman Cole

Nancy Cole Silverman is here today on Mystery Playground to tell us about her new book, Shadow of a Doubt. 

"Good morning. Boy, you are harder to catch than a rabbit on roller skates."   

"I had to hand it to the anonymous caller on the other end of the line, she was better than most and I almost hated to hang-up on her.  Almost, I say, because I did. But, not without wondering just who she was and what had happened in her life that caused her to now be dialing for someone’s dollars just to make ends meet.  If I thought about it, the woman on the other end of the line was probably no different than thousands of others of us in transition, and this outward bound call campaign she’d been hired to do was but a temporary stop until she was able to find something better.  At least, I hoped so."

 The fact of the matter is, more and more of us find ourselves in transitional jobs.  Some of us because it’s a matter of what we do until the market clears up, or because we’re in school, or retired, forced out of a job, or maybe, just plain desperate.  My character, Carol Childs, in Shadow of Doubt, considers her recent gig at the radio station where she worked as a sales person, a transitional role until she could land a job as a reporter.  Until then, everything else was just a means to a end.  

Carol is a woman of many talents.  She’s a single, middle-aged mom, a semi-empty nester, a college graduate with an unused degree in journalism and a desire to try her hand at a second career as a reporter.  And like anyone who’s ever tried to reinvent themselves she has her fair share of naysayers, starting with her young, upstart of a boss, and boy wonder, Tyler Hunt, who considers her the world’s oldest cub reporter.

What she needs is a good story.  And when her next door neighbor comes knocking on her door to tell her that her famed Hollywood aunt has died – the night after the big Silver Screen Awards Show - she knows this is her chance.

But reinvention comes with its challenges. 

The facts she uncovers aren’t pointing to an anonymous murderer, but to her friend and neighbor.  Her desire to succeed is tested by the fact that the case she is reporting on not only concerns the death of a top Hollywood agent and the aunt of her next door neighbor, but also that of two other senior ranking agents within the same agency.  The FBI is called in.  Product tampering is suspected and Carol suddenly finds herself in the middle of a serial murder case with her FBI boyfriend investigating one side, while she investigates the other.  And when a Hollywood psychic befriends her, predicting more deaths and asking for her help, Carol realizes she must do more than just report the facts. Meanwhile as the facts start to stack up against her friend, one of the station’s on-air personalities makes a rush to judgment condemning her friend and neighbor as not only a murderer, but a cold hearted serial killer.

Like a rabbit on roller skates, Carol’s got to move quickly to keep the court of public opinion from judging her friend before the case can be brought to trial.