Oklahoma novelist’s debut involves a cold case
This week, Avon Harper Collins released the first of three books by Oklahoma novelist Jordan Dane. “No One Heard Her Scream” is available in stores.
Dane, a friend of Cold Case OKC, based her debut novel in part on real-life crimes, including at least one unsolved case.
“The Natalee Holloway investigation in Aruba shaped the story,” Dane wrote in a Q&A on her Web site, www.jordandane.com. ”I watched the drama played out in the media and witnessed the parents’ pain through this ongoing nightmare. I had also visited Aruba during the 1980s and knew something of the layout and terrain. And in my book research, I found many Internet sites that theorize a human trafficking angle to this very compelling case. Human trafficking and the trauma of such an ordeal became a facet to the plot.”
The novel centers on San Antonio police Detective Becca Montgomery, who is torn between two cases. Barred from investigating her sister’s abduction from a field trip, she distracts herself by working on another case: human remains in the walls of a burned theater.
“There is a cold case of skeletal remains in a wall,” Dane wrote in an e-mail to Cold Case OKC, “and there’s forensics about all of that part in the plot. … Quite a bit actually, including how they solve the case in the end. Cold cases are hard to solve with evidence, so it comes down to a tricky interrogation.”
Publisher’s Weekly praised the book as “a dynamite debut” and said: “Dane’s smooth style, believable characters and intense pacing will remind readers of Lisa Jackson, Lisa Gardner and Tami Hoag. While Dane’s debut is being marketed as romantic suspense, it crosses over into plain thriller country: the tight plotting and the male characters are exceptional, bad guys and good.”
For more information, visit Dane’s Web site.
