Now & Then: A Parker City Mystery - Paperback

by Justin M. Kiska (Author)

Every city has its secrets. But those secrets don't stay buried forever.

Spring, 1981 . . . One of Parker City's most powerful women is found strangled inside the historical society - and the case lands on the desks of Ben Winters and Tommy Mason, two rookie detectives barely out of the academy and already resented by half the department. As the body count climbs and the killer the papers dub the Spring Strangler stays one step ahead, Ben and Tommy learn a hard truth: in a city where everyone knows everyone's business, the deadliest secrets belong to the people with the most to lose.

Decades later, Ben and Tommy are legends and just days from retirement. Then their very first case comes back to haunt them, and the closure they thought they'd earned starts to look like the biggest mistake of their careers. Did they catch the killer in 1981? Or has the Spring Strangler been walking free in Parker City all along?

Moving seamlessly between the big-hair, big-secrets 1980s and a present-day reckoning that threatens to unravel everything Ben and Tommy built their reputations on, Now & Then is a twisty, character-driven police procedural about loyalty, ambition, and the lies a town tells itself to protect its own. Fans of small-town crime sagas with real emotional stakes and a killer final-act reveal won't be able to put it down.

Now & Then was a nominee for the 2022 Silver Falchion Award for Best Investigator.