The Secret Witness

"The Secret Witness" by George Gibbs is a gripping mystery novel that takes readers on a thrilling journey through a web of deceit, secrets, and intrigue. As the protagonist unravels the truth behind a perplexing crime, Gibbs masterfully keeps readers on the edge of their seats with unexpected twists and turns, making this ebook an enthralling page-turner for lovers of detective fiction.

Every small town has a moment when the real world abruptly intrudes, shattering the town's notions of itself and its people. For citizens of Marshall, Michigan, that moment came August 18, 1967. Nola Puyear was working downtown at the Tasty Cafe that morning when she received a package. She opened it and was instantly killed in a fiery explosion. In the months that followed, law enforcement and prosecutors wrestled with a crime that to all appearances was senseless. Evidence recovered from the blown-up restaurant, including a bottle of pills that had been tainted with lye, suggested a concerted plot to murder Mrs. Puyear. But why had someone wanted to kill the well-liked woman, by all accounts a pillar of her close-knit community? For that matter, was Marshall really the quaint paradise it seemed to be? Secret Witness brings to light startling new evidence and freshly uncovered facts to address these and other questions that, to this day, surround one of Michigan's most brutal murders. Based on extensive interviews with surviving prosecutors, police, and witnesses, Blaine Pardoe re-creates the investigation that pried into Marshall's dark underbelly and uncovered the seamy private lives led by some of the town's citizenry but led to only tenuous theories about the bombing. The book also examines the pivotal role played by the Secret Witness program, an initiative by the Detroit News that offered rewards for anonymous tips related to violent crimes. What's ultimately revealed is the true depth of evil that occurred in Marshall that day. Every small town has dirty little secrets. This time, they were deadly.

The story follows a female protagonist Constantia Dudley and her relationship with the mysterious Ormond. The Dudley family lives in New York where they get victimized by a trusted employee who embezzles their money and leave them in huge debt. They are forced to move to Philadelphia where they endure the loss of their mother, a yellow fever epidemic, rigors of winter and the exactions of landlords. Constantia, the daughter of the family, manages to keep the family afloat by her efforts and determination. Her luck changes when she meets Ormond, a wealthy military projector and conscientious atheist, who falls in love with her. Ormond helps the Dudley family to rise from poverty and makes numerous efforts to win Constantia's heart. The Secret Witness thematically focuses on the ways in which individuals change in reaction to their social environments. The novel thoroughly explores the republicanism and republican values common to the early American nation.

As it tells the story of Constantia Dudley, from her family's financial collapse to her encounters with a series of cosmopolitan revolutionaries and reactionaries, Charles Brockden Brown's Ormond; or The Secret Witness (1799) develops a sustained meditation on late-Enlightenment debates concerning political liberty, women's rights, conventions of sex-gender, and their relation to the reshaping of an Atlantic world in the throes of transformation. This edition of Ormond includes Brown's Alcuin (1798), an important dialogue on women's rights and marriage, as well as his key essays on history and literature, along with selections from contemporary writings on women's education and revolution debates that figure in the novel's background and in the charged atmosphere of the late 1790s.

"This is Reaper speaking." So begins an anonymous letter published in a Utah newspaper after a young couple is viciously murdered. Tooele County sheriff Elizabeth Gray leads the investigation into the double homicide, which is eerily reminiscent of a string of brutal killings years ago. When the letter leads detectives to yet another body, Gray calls on an old friend for help.