A patient, intelligent mystery that lands with quiet force…
A fiery plane crash, a dead professor, and a buried research breakthrough ignite a slow-burning investigation into corruption, complicity, and conscience in Meier’s morally complex mystery. When a small plane crashes into a hog farm, no one in Scottsville asks too many questions. However, Ted Grant, a skeptical philosophy professor, isn’t convinced it was an accident. It didn’t help that the man behind the controls had just whispered of a major discovery before his death. He turns to Frank Adams, a retired crash investigator, to dig deeper. What Frank finds is sabotage, corporate interference, and a town that would rather stay silent than face the truth.
Meier writes with the restrained confidence of someone who knows the terrain—of aviation, yes, but also of human pressure points. The novel’s procedural elements unfold at the rhythm of real investigation: slow, deliberate, and quietly unsettling. Frank is a compelling lead; sharp but understated, and Ted’s philosophical interjections add both humor and thematic depth. There are no cartoon villains here, only people making terrible bargains under institutional weight.
In the end, the novel is less about solving a mystery than about watching a man insist that the truth matters, even when no one else wants it uncovered. It’s a story about responsibility, and what happens when those with power or knowledge abdicate it. Meier doesn’t overreach. He doesn’t tie every thread into a neat bow. Instead, he leaves readers with the unsettling but resonant idea that what’s good, and what’s evil, often depends on who’s willing to speak when silence is easier.
A tightly constructed mystery that favors substance over spectacle.
BQB Publishing
Pub date October 7, 2025
ISBN: 979-8886330502
Price $18.99 Paperback, $7.99 Kindle edition
