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Killing the Past It's 1992, the year POW/MIA records were declassified and moved from DIA to PERSCOM. A record that shouldn't have been there turns up missing, triggering a lethal chain of events. As an Army lieutenant colonel, Maggie O'Brien confronts bias and double standards when she reconnects with an old college friend, Ray, at The Wall in D.C. and discovers a mutual attraction. He convinces her to lay the past to rest, with deadly results. As her mentor, Sam, comforts Maggie, they end up in bed, creating a moral dilemma: Sam's wife, Barbara, is a good friend. Sam relates a chilling story about Vietnam and the secret he, Ray, and a recently dead guy (Googe) have carried for 23 years: Henry Michael “Half Moon” Mullins didn't die in a Huey crash; he's still alive. Maggie and Sam discover Sam's “Hank” and Maggie's “Mike” are the same person—her “dead” fiancé. The common denominators between Ray's and Googe's deaths are Mike and Sam. Maggie's not sure how they're involved as Mike re-enters her life. Maggie begins to fall for Jerry, the cop investigating the strange happenings at her townhouse. Because she focused on her career after Mike's death, she's awkward and rusty at relationships. After another body turns up in front of her place, Maggie ends up with more questions than answers: Who's trying to frame her for the murders? Who's spreading vicious rumors about her “affair” with Sam? Who tried to push her in front of the metro at the Pentagon stop? Most importantly, whom can she trust? Despite the chemistry between her and Jerry, Maggie wavers: She's still ambivalent about her feelings for Sam and Mike. When Maggie lets down her guard, the killer lures her to an isolated location to activate a demented plan, with Maggie as the key player.Novel Writing Contest Winner Janice Ryan Hall, free-lance writer/photographer, recently won Pottersville Press's 2nd annual novel writing contest. Michael Lister, conference coordinator and author of the John Jordan mystery series, announced Hall's win at the 6 th Annual Gulf Coast Writers' Conference. Pottersville Press will publish “Killing the Past” in 2006.
In her 23-year Army career, Ms. Hall worked primarily in personnel and public affairs, serving her last four years in the Washington, D.C., area. Since retiring in Pensacola, Fla., she has held jobs ranging from a women's assisted living facility administrator to special ed teacher at an inner-city middle school. She currently serves as an intervention specialist at that school. Ms. Hall's writing/editing credits over the past 10 years include articles and photos published in “Climate” and “Pensacola Today” magazines and the “Pensacola News Journal,” including several of its specialty publications. In 2003, she participated in the “So, You Want to Write for the Pensacola News Journal” forum at Pensacola Junior College. Ms. Hall shares a house in Pensacola with her husband, Ron, a digital designer, and 13 squawking birds. Ditto, their African Grey (the aviary alpha bird), served as consultant on this novel.
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When Janice Ryan Hall sold her northern Virginia townhouse in 2001, she neglected to tell the new owners the place served as the scene of two grisly murders. Fortunately, the subject never came up.