A widow starts a new life in a small quaint town full of quirky characters and in renovating her new home finds “scraps of paper” that make her suspect two children and a woman went missing from the house...30 years ago. Are they just missing or were they murdered? In trying to solve the mystery she and her ex-homicide detective friend put themselves in grave danger.
NOTE UPDATE: Scraps of Paper: 263 reviews on Amazon with a 4.4 star average!!!! NOW ALL THREE OF THE SPOOKIE TOWN MKURDER MYSTERIES, Scraps of Paper (which is STILL FREE EVERYWHERE), All Things Slip Away, and Ghosts Beneath Us ARE ALL ON SALE NOW!!!!
Abigail Sutton’s beloved husband walks out one night, doesn’t return, and two years later is found dead, a victim of an earlier crime. It’s made her sympathetic to the missing and their families.Starting her new life, Abigail moves to a small town and buys a fixer-upper house left empty when old Edna Summers died. Once it was also home to Edna’s younger sister, Emily, and her two children, Jenny and Christopher, who, people believe, drove away one night, thirty years ago, and just never came back.But in renovating the house Abigail finds scraps of paper hidden behind baseboards and tucked beneath the porch that hint the three could have been victims of foul play. Then she finds their graves hidden in the woods behind the house and with the help of eccentric townspeople and ex-homicide detective, Frank Lester, she discovers the three were murdered. Then she and Frank try to uncover who killed them and why…but in the process awaken the ire of the murderer.
Excerpt
While cleaning the baseboard in the living room, she noticed it was loose and had the hammer in her hand ready to nail it down again when she spied a scrap of paper sticking out from behind the piece of wood.
Such a simple act, yanking at that slip of paper, but it would change everything. Pulling it carefully from its hiding place, she saw it was a tightly folded and yellowed scrap of white paper laced in spider webs and dust. The sort of white drawing paper she used to sketch on as a child. She unfolded it slowly. There was printing on it, bright red crayon scribbling as a child might do. At first Abigail wasn’t sure what it was. Then she looked closer and read:
ME AND CHRIS ARE SO SCARED. HE WAS MEAN TO MOMMY AGAIN, MADE HER CRY. HURT HER. WE HATE HIM!!! in a childish scrawl. There was a J at the bottom.
She stared at the scrap of paper and reread it. It was obviously old. No telling how long it’d been behind the baseboard. She refolded it and tucked it into a compartment of her purse. The two children’s names who’d once lived there, if she recalled correctly, had been Christopher and…Jenny. Amazing, the note could have been from them. How strange, after all these years, for her to find it. But who was HE?
Abigail couldn’t stop dwelling on the note as she resumed her work. She made it a point to search for other scraps of paper sticking out from hidden places. A treasure hunt. By the early evening, when she had to quit painting for the day because her body refused to move, she’d uncovered yet another scrawled note in red crayon, all caps, similar to the first one from under the baseboards.
It said: WE WENT TO BED AGAIN WITHOUT SUPPER. SHE WAS MAD. I AM SO HUNGRY. C
Was it from Christopher? She put the note in her purse with the other one. She was trying not to feel sorrow for the mistreated children. After all it had been so long ago. But she couldn’t stop thinking about them and what these notes meant. Had they been abused and in danger? From whom? And why should it bother her so?
Professional Reviews
5 Stars Reviewed by Michael McManus for Readers' Favorite May 17, 2013
Abigail Sutton, a graphics artist, whose husband went missing for two years but was recently found dead, moves to the small village of Spookie. She has left her old life behind, hoping to escape from the pain of losing the love of her life and to start over in another place where she can pursue her dream of being a real artist; not just someone who makes pictures for advertising. From the moment that she enters the quaint little town, she falls in love with its shops and stores and the people who run them. On her very first visit to the little diner on Main Street she meets a local Realtor, who in only four tries finds a house that is perfect for her. Unfortunately, along with getting the deed to the property, Abigail also inherits its mystery. Many years ago a mother and her two children disappeared from the house, and our transplanted artist becomes compelled to find out why. With the help of a retired cop, with whom she begins a close friendship, and in the face of more than a little danger, she works through clues old and new to solve a thirty-year-old crime.
“Scraps of Paper” is a well-constructed mystery with just the right mix of good guys and bad guys, with a sprinkling of oddballs and misfits thrown in. Kathryn Meyer Griffin does a nice job of allowing the friendship of the book's two main characters to develop as the story progresses. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes a good who-done-it, set in a picturesque environment with believable characters. This is the first book in a series the author calls 'The Spookie Town Mysteries'.
SHE NEVER SLEPT Feb. 10, 2013 5 stars
Speaking as someone who enjoys mystery novels, I very much enjoyed reading this novel and following the clues along with the protagonist, Abigail Sutton. As the novel continues, the stakes continue to grow higher for Abigail as she investigates the disappearance thirty years before of the previous tenants of the house she has moved into. Griffith does an excellent job of keeping up the suspense all throughout the novel, and I for one found it much more interesting than many of the detective shows on network television these days.
This novel was originally released in 2003 (though internal references place the story itself in 2000), and has only now been re-released by Griffith as an eBook. I am pleased to say that the novel has aged very well, and is totally absent of the jarring differences in language and story structure one sometimes finds in books that are at least a decade old. Indeed, Griffith’s choice of words is simple and direct without being one-dimensional, and she certainly does not skimp on describing characters and settings.
Final Thoughts:
This novel is a most enjoyable read. It is suspenseful, richly detailed, timeless, and keeps you guessing until the very end. I look forward to reading more of Kathryn Meyer Griffith’s work in the future, particularly further entries in this series, including the already-published second novel, All Things Slip Away. This novel earns an enthusiastic five tentacles from this reviewer!
TONIVERSE Blog March 28, 2013 5 stars
Abigail Sutton’s husband has left her….again. The first time, Joel drove away and never came back. This time, police have found his car and his body, the victim of an apparent mugging. This gives Abigail the closure she needs to move away from her memories to the little town of Spookie, which reminds her in some ways of the place where she grew up. Spookie has its share of eccentrics but it also has a place where everyone gathers and “knows your name”…the local diner and everyone seems friendly. It’s a place where Abby can pursue her dream of being an artist and she soon has more commissions than she can handle.
There’s also a house for sale. The owner’s dead and there are no heirs and the price is right, but… There’s also a mystery surrounding the old Summers’ house. Its owner was a recluse and her younger sister, beautiful Emily whom most of the men in town adored, drove away one day with her twins and was never heard from again. There’s a rumor the house’s is haunted but Abby doesn’t care. She loves it.
During her renovation of the old house, Abby finds scraps of paper, pages of diaries, and childish drawings tucked away behind wallboards and in air ducts, written by ten-year-old Jenny before she disappeared. She shows them to her neighbor Frank, a long-haired, earring-wearing ex-cop who’s beginning to become a regular visitor and also to Samantha, a local reporter. Samantha runs a series on articles on the disappearance and the letter start pouring in. Some letters are helpful, a few are threats. Many people suggest Emily didn’t just leave Spookie…
…and then Abby finds three graves beneath an abandoned tree house in the woods…
MY OPINION: As usual Ms. Griffith has written an entertaining story. Several times the townsfolk refer to Abigail as a “Jessica Fletcher clone” and truly, this could be a Murder, She Wrote episode. Full of quirky, nosy townsfolk who mean well, a budding love interest in Frank, and even a charming kitten named Snowball, it’s just suspenseful enough to make you want to keep reading until you find out whodunit.
Willa Goodheart, honest and hard-working white collar worker finds herself connected to a police investigation for a serial killer; and she hasn't a clue why - that is, until she begins digging.
During the Christmas Season, servants Jane Meyers and Alfie Dawkins search for missing persons from opposite sides of the social spectrum: a homeless man and the Duke's son.
