THE RUINS OF WOODMAN’S VILLAGE

When twin teenage sisters go missing from a backwoods shantytown, Laurel, Maine Police Chief Tim Nichols’ summer of patrolling beaches and leading parades comes to an abrupt end. A desperate search for the girls takes him from seaside bars and abandoned farms to million dollar estates and cobbled-together shacks.

As Nichols doggedly unearths scraps of information and deciphers a steady flow of half-truths, he finds a darkness coursing through Laurel’s sunny, tree-lined streets.  He races to piece together the girls’ disappearance, knowing that doing so may tear the façade off his postcard-perfect town.

. . .

"In seaside communities up and down the New England coast, the mega-wealthy share space with too many people who are struggling to get by. Al Waitt knows this world better than anyone — the glamorous restaurants, the dirt road hovels, the sense of entitlement, the deep-seated resentment. More than anything, he knows the people. And in this book, at once riveting and elegant, Waitt brings it all together in an exquisite and explosive read." 

~ Brian McGrory, The Boston Globe.

Author of Strangled and The Incumbent

"As much as the landscape presents a unique regional quality to Maine, so do its residents. The eclectic mix of yuppie, townie, vacationer, and transplant are equally represented with cinematic prose and pulsing dialogue. Set against the backdrop of a small coastal town, this thriller grips you like a riptide, with Waitt encapsulating a tension that will make you devour this book with a page-turning fury." 

~ Joe Ricker, author of All the Good in Evil

and Some Awful Cunning