Fear of Normal

Small Town Seized by Murders

Canaville, Tennessee, shrouded by the gloom of an unsolved murder – Miss Holly – a teacher beaten to death at the school, must cope with the death of a teenage girl, also brutally beaten, a crime with no clues or suspects. When a second girl in the church youth group is killed fear, sorrow, and suspicions abound. It could have been a vagrant, a stalker, or the vengeful ghost of Miss Holly, but some suspect Winters Macklin, widowed youth pastor whose wife died under unusual circumstances. He seems strangely interested in the deaths as he works to bring hope to the town living under the pall of grief, and uncover truths about the town’s past and present.

Fear of Normal explores the mystery of the teacher’s cruel murder when Faith Methodist’s new associate pastor, Winters Macklin, can’t get the crime out of his head. To complicate matters two of the popular, precocious, and attractive teen girls in Macklin’s youth group are killed in the same way as Miss Holly. Now the old crime resurfaces and the new murders need to be solved, but Macklin’s curiosity and his involvement with Sydney Sharp, local outcast, turn suspicions on him.

Fear of Normal deals with the sometimes challenging culture of rural, small town America – simple prejudice, the past accepted as part of life, an “old boy” tolerance that protects suspects, and the unique and ingrained knowledge which bars new-comers from entering into society. As Macklin presses forward to solve the mysteries and push suspicions away from him, he learns that almost everyone has a secret, a broken past, and he must deal with his own history of fear and suspicion.

I found this novel to be a real page turner. The characters are well developed and seem normal enough, but everyone has a secret. One of the things I liked was that nobody was completely clean, but neither were they completely evil. These are normal people caught up in very not normal circumstances, and all the complexity that entails is found in this novel. This is a good old fashioned murder mystery, but it’s much more. The murders are the central turning point of the plot, but they are also the stage upon which the past lives, secrets, and unfulfilled dreams of the characters become revealed. A very entertaining read that I would recommend. – “Aman not be be confused with anon” – Amazon Review.