Gary Braver - Rumor of Evil: A Novel

10/13/23 • 46 min

A 16-year-old exchange student accused of witchcraft—dark circumstances and sick rumors lead to her brutal death, a cover-up, and more murders two decades later

Detectives Kirk Lucian and Mandy Wing are charged with investigating a reported suicide of a Cambridge woman in her backyard. The death came as a shock—the woman was considered a pillar of her community and was well-liked by everyone. After further investigation, the hanging appears staged. Once Kirk and Mandy’s suspicions are confirmed, they make a list of suspects.

Clues begin to connect the recent murder to the decades-old mysterious death of a beautiful 16-year-old Romany exchange student who perished when a treehouse she was sleeping in caught fire. The girl, Vadima Lupescu, had done “odd” things among her American peers that stirred up prejudices and suspicions, leading to her brutal death—and cover-up.

As Kirk and Mandy investigate the bizarre rumors—that Vadima had “gypsy powers” and put curses on those around her—they discover a cauldron of dark secrets. Will they uncover the true cause of this tangled web of deaths and horrors before it spirals out of control?

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A 16-year-old exchange student accused of witchcraft—dark circumstances and sick rumors lead to her brutal death, a cover-up, and more murders two decades later

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Previous Episode

Joe Clifford - All Who Wander

One snowy night in 1998, Brooke Mulcahy's car slides off the road in rural Vermont. Her car is discovered. She is not. Twenty-one years later, Robert Kirby, Brooke's stepbrother, is paid a visit from a young woman (Lily), claiming to be Brooke's daughter. Since a tumultuous upbringing, Robert, formerly known as "Bobby," has enjoyed considerable success. Now an esteemed professor at a private Upstate New York university, Robert has just received a significant NEH grant. After Lily's visit, Robert's life is upended.

His wife Stephanie reveals she is unhappy in the marriage and takes their teenage son to visit her sister in PA. Brooke's former best friend, Aaron Reardon, still devastated from Brooke's disappearance, offers to help. And forever lurking in the background is Mike Rakowski, Brooke's ex, a possessive, abusive drug addict.

As Robert's world unravels, he revisits that night twenty-one years ago where everything went wrong, unearthing a horrible, bone-chilling secret. In the vein of Simone St. James' Sun Down Motel and other female-driven domestic psychological thrillers today, ALL WHO WANDER mines the depths of past transgression, begging the question: do past sin automatically negate future happiness?

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Next Episode

Lev AC Rosen - The Bell in the Fog

The Bell in the Fog, a dazzling historical mystery by Lev AC Rosen, asks—once you have finally found a family, how far would you go to prove yourself to them?

San Francisco, 1952. Detective Evander “Andy” Mills has started a new life for himself as a private detective—but his business hasn’t exactly taken off. It turns out that word spreads fast when you have a bad reputation, and no one in the queer community trusts him enough to ask an ex-cop for help.

When James, an old flame from the war who had mysteriously disappeared, arrives in his offices above the Ruby, Andy wants to kick him out. But the job seems to be a simple case of blackmail, and Andy’s debts are piling up. He agrees to investigate, despite everything it stirs up.

The case will take him back to the shadowy, closeted world of the Navy, and then out into the gay bars of the city, where the past rises up to meet him, like the swell of the ocean under a warship. Missing people, violent strangers, and scandalous photos that could destroy lives are a whirlpool around him, and Andy better make sense of it all before someone pulls him under for good.

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