Joseph Geren

Chastity's Virtue: a Michael Marcus Mystery Joseph Geren

Chastity Milligan is missing, but so what? She ran away twice as a juvenile. She's now 19, an adult. She can come and go as she pleases. But why did she leave her purse behind? It had over $200 in it. Why did she cut her hair and leave the bleached blond tresses lying on her bed? Why did she abandon her car? Whose blood is in her bathtub? Private Detective Michael Marcus is hired to find the teen with the checkered childhood. He soon discovers that three other women disappeared on the same day in October, but in different years. Coincidence? Mike doesn't believe in coincidence. He searches for a common thread linking the four missing women. His wife Annie has psychic feelings that Chastity is alive, but being held captive in a cool, damp, dark place, like a cellar, a cave, or maybe even a mausoleum. "The bones scare Chastity," Annie says, but she doesn't know what that means. Mike scoffs at psychic "hocus-pocus," but he has little physical evidence, no eyewitnesses, and no choice. He listens to his wife and his path leads him to what must surely be the bowels of Hell.