Invisible Wounds by Sue Howell

About the book

Maggie Dare, a police detective in the small Midwestern town of Mount Pleasant, is called on to investigate the murder of Tony Shoemaker, a student at South Central State University. Tony's death at first seems to be tied to his drug dealing activities, but as Maggie and her partner Brooks Oliver follow up the case, they discover other lines of inquiry. Apparently, Tony and a fellow student, Travis Potter, have been blackmailing a gay professor, Bob Macready, in hopes of passing his course. Macready, whose alibi is tenuous, becomes the prime suspect. The fact that Macready's office was ransacked the evening of the murder further complicates the case. The only thing missing is one student paper on the media and the Vietnam War, not, however, from one of the blackmailers. Rob Simpson, an honors journalism student, wrote about the South Central student newspaper, the Banner, and its treatment of the war in Vietnam. The discovery of the missing paper leads Dare and Oliver to a twenty-year-old unsolved murder, the death of Susanna Lee.

Although not quite convinced that the two murders are related, Dare and Oliver are drawn into the case of Susanna Lee, an art student brutally raped and strangled on the university campus as she was returning to her dorm. Susanna's boyfriend, Hugh Barbour, an antiwar activist, was an obvious suspect. Barbour may have been involved in the planned bombing of an on-campus lab implicated in biological warfare research. Other suspects emerge: an anonymous stalker in Susanna's English class; Nick Ferrier, the philosophy professor who accuses Susanna of "leading him on"; Susanna's father, Jacob Lee, who tries to hide what he wants to forget--his sexual abuse of his daughter.

Aided by an FBI surveillance tape, Maggie and Brooks finally realize who killed Susanna Lee--and killed Tony Shoemaker to cover up Susanna's murder. But it's almost too late. The man whose obsession led him to murder Susanna has finally found personal happiness. Now, desperate to conceal his connection to Susanna, Stanley Brackett has followed the evidence trail to Rob Simpson, whose computer contains a vital clue to Brackett's identity. He sets out to dispose of Rob. But Brackett's precarious mental state and the quick thinking of Dare and Oliver bring the case to a bloody close.

About the author

Sue Howell has spent most of her life within hailing distance of the Mississippi River. Following a stint as a social worker in New Orleans, she taught writing and literature to high school and college students. An award-winning teacher, she has received fellowships from the National Institute for the Humanities and the Council for Basic Education. She lives with her husband in southern Illinois, where she enjoys cooking Cajun style, long-distance biking, and playing the blues guitar.