Deadly Crossroads

19th century America.

Doctor Josiah Bartlett has grown fat tending to the mundane needs of the folk in the quiet town of Concord, Massachusetts.

But the bucolic bliss is rudely shattered by the tragic death of Mary Chase, a vivacious young woman who teaches in the local school and a close friend of Louisa May Alcott, the soon-to-be author.

Mary is believed to have drowned herself after she is fished out of the Concord River, but when Doctor Bartlett examines the bloated and rigid corpse, he finds her head caved in.

Could the suicide be murder?

Lack of hard evidence leads the local sheriff to dismiss him when Doctor Bartlett tries to persuade him to open a murder investigation.

He warns Bartlett to leave the law to him.

But the old doctor relishes his new self-appointed role – and calls on the town’s intellectuals to help him interpret Mary’s diary.

It soon reveals an unnamed lover who lives amid the bright lights of Boston.

And a different picture of Mary begins to emerge – of a hot-blooded young female whose true nature and vitality has had a dramatic, sometimes awful, impact on the lives of the men she has been involved with.

Before they know it, another brutal killing rocks the town.

Is it linked to Mary’s death? Or is it just a terrifying coindence?

Doctor Bartlett must race to the heart of the matter, before his own life reaches a Deadly Crossroad...

Daniel Bjork cleverly evokes the moral maze at the heart of Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter – the tale of a ‘fallen’ woman – in this thrilling classic crime novel.