Roger Stelljes Presents Silenced Girls: An Absolutely addictive mystery thriller - Agent Tori Hunter Book 1 - A Personal Favorite for 2026

Tori held up the newspaper article. “This is an invitation. My sister’s killer wants to play a game, so… game on.” 

“You may have broken off contact with everyone here, but someone kept track of you. Watch your back.”

The massive stack of mail had collapsed and fallen to the floor. “Naturally.” Exasperated, Tori walked over and dropped down to her knees. She started pulling all the pieces of mail together, finding miscellaneous bills, junk mail, a donation solicitation for Boston College, her latest Vanity Fair and Vogue magazines, and then a yellow envelope that she flipped over to make sure it was addressed to her. There was no return address, but the postmark was for Manchester Bay. Tori exhaled. She hadn’t received a piece of mail from Minnesota, let alone Manchester Bay, in years. Pushing herself up from the floor, she went to her desk and reached for her letter opener. 

She sliced the top open, reached inside, and pulled out a single piece of paper. “What the…?” It was a photocopy of the front page of the Manchester Bay Chronicle, dated July 5, 1999, and the headline read: Hunter Girl Missing. In the lower left-hand corner, secured by a paper clip, was a typed note that read: Check the Manchester Bay Chronicle. It will look familiar. She’d seen the clipping before, although it had been years. A copy of it was stored in a box in the closet. “It will look… familiar.” Tori went to her desk and powered up her laptop. She typed ManchesterBayChronicle.com into the search bar. On the home page the first headline was blunt: Genevieve Lash Missing. The sub-headline read: On Twentieth Anniversary of Jessica Hunter Disappearance. 

As Tori scanned the article on the website, she learned that Genevieve Lash was last seen by a friend she dropped off at home early in the morning of July 5. In his press conference, Shepard County Sheriff Cal Lund reported that Lash’s car was found abandoned and locked along the side of a county road with a flat right front tire. “Cal…” Tori murmured.

Manchester Bay always went big on the fireworks for the Fourth. Synchronized to music, they were launched from the end of the long fishing pier at the opposite end of the beach. A massive crowd gathered in lawn chairs or on blankets on the beach and in the park and then along South Shore Drive, which was barricaded for several blocks to allow for more seating. A flotilla of speedboats and pontoons were anchored in the placid waters of the bay, as well as in front of Mannion’s on the Lake, a restaurant farther northwest up the shoreline. As they settled into their seats on the bench, Jason casually put his right arm gently around Tori’s shoulder. Self-conscious to a fault, she almost always held back her emotions and affection. Yet, in this moment, she was… content. For once, she stopped caring what anyone else thought or saw. Instead of keeping just a little distance between them, she snuggled closer to Jason and then turned her face to his. Rarely the initiator, she almost surprised herself as she leaned up and kissed him, first just a little peck on his lips and then a second, softer kiss that she held for an extra moment as the fireworks show began. It was a long show, lasting nearly forty-five minutes before there was a rapid-fire launching up into the sky. “I think this is the grand finale,” Jason observed as one rocket after another shot up into the sky, exploding loudly into a kaleidoscope of colors over the waters of the bay. With his arm wrapped lightly around Tori’s shoulder, he pulled her a little closer and then leaned down and kissed her again. “Do you want to get out of here? Just you and me?” Tori froze. She knew what this question meant, to go off alone with him, and where it was leading. She’d talked about this with Jessie, who’d already taken the plunge. Tori had openly wondered whether she was ready. It had been a frequent discussion topic between the two of them. “You are,” Jessie had assured her. “You’re ready.” “How do you know? How do I know?” “Because you’re asking the question. If you ask the question, this question, the big question, then you know⁠—” “—the answer,” Tori finished the sentence. Her body was a jumble of nerves at the thought of… sex.

Tori was aware as she came home from another case completion that the annual holiday that haunted her each year had come and gone. She'd never forget that it was during that celebration she had lost her virginity, but, worse, lost her twin sister... Sure, they had talked about it before going to the town event; but, now, it was a heavy load of regret, knowing that she had not been around her sister, as she normally was, when she had, for some reason, disappeared... Not ever discovering what happened was part of the reason she had become a FBI Agent, specializing in lost children...

Nothing, however, could have prepared her for getting a notice in her mail postmarked from her home town--a place she had not visited since she had buried her father.  That was now twenty years ago!

Traveling back to where she had lived for most of her life was hard. But when she checked in with the local police, she was pleased that she knew the now chief and one of the officers was still there.  She was sure that the new detective, who was handling the death of Genevieve Lash, would not easily welcome her desire to participate, so she went to Cal first and  let him know she was back and showed him the message that she'd received. There was really no choice, having an FBI agent with expertise in tracking missing people, would be an asset to the case that could not be ignored.

“Yeah, but then you showed up with that article and note,” he replied. “We either have a situation where they are connected, and your sister’s disappearance was not random, or someone is using the disappearance of your sister to deflect and hide some other agenda.”

Tori was surprised and grateful that she also was able to reconnect with quite a number of her high school gang. It was to prove an advantage as they all realized that with the message that was sent to Tory, which had spotlighted the 20th anniversary of her sister's disappearance, a merge of the two cases would be required to investigate where Genevieve might have been taken...

Interestingly, the two cases which were the first to be pulled together showed many parallels between the two... And, it was a natural assumption to believe that if somebody was still active 20 years later, that there were more victims between this period and possibly even before... But what they discovered to be the reality was shocking. Soon Tori was seeking help from a friend from the FBI... 

But right in the middle of the investigation, Tori was called by her boss at the FBI to travel to where a two-year-old child had been kidnapped... Another case within the larger case!

Tori tried sleeping in an easy chair in the office of the Taylors’ home. With the number of times she’d done this in various houses, buildings, and offices over the years while working a kidnapping, she ought to have trained her mind and body to be able to sleep anywhere and on anything, no matter its size or level of comfort. Yet every time it was a struggle. And now, while loath to admit it, especially with a two-year-old child kidnapped, her mind was elsewhere. No matter the lengths she went to bury it, the memory of her sister and her disappearance was always there, lurking in the back of her mind. Thoughts of Jessie were ready to be triggered by the littlest thing from 1999, like if she heard “Scar Tissue” or “Californication” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Or if she happened to stumble across a Friends episode,

something she and Jessie always watched. If Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me was on, the last movie they’d gone to before she disappeared, it would all come flooding back. They’d spent three weeks

saying: Oh be-have and Not if I can help it or Felicity Shagwell. Shagwell by name. Shag-very-well by reputation. It was the little moments and memories like that which, in a flash, brought her sister’s case out of the dark corners of her mind. That memory was no longer the lurking, occasionally painful distraction that would appear and then fade. Now it was once again all-consuming. She had the taste of reopening her sister’s case—of Manchester Bay, of walking the stretch of highway where Jessie was abducted, cruising the streets of their old hometown knowing, knowing that somewhere nearby the killer was skulking, maybe even watching, and even possibly hunting her. More than anything, that was why she was wide awake in the pitch-black of the night. Instinctually she reached for her phone and checked her text messages and emails. There was an email from Tracy Sheets from late last night indicating she was working on the project and thought she’d have something to share later tomorrow, which was now today. Later in the day—how much later? How long would she have to wait? And if Tracy had something, what did she have? And even if Tracy did have something, Tori wondered what she could then turn around and do with it. She’d considered calling Braddock but then thought better of it. They were on good terms now and she didn’t want to do anything to distract or, knowing herself, annoy him before she heard from Tracy. Besides, she had no idea when she’d be able to get back to Manchester Bay. Trying to sleep in the chair was worthless. As if her own insomnia wasn’t enough, it was a cloudless night with a full moon, and the light filtered in through the six tall and lightly curtained windows of the office. Turning on a light was not required for her to inspect the many pictures on the shelves of the long, built-in bookcase. There were family pictures, several of the Taylors with Ava over her two years. A high shelf contained a set of photos of Jake Taylor with what appeared to be college friends, and on another lower shelf was pictures of Erica Taylor and what looked to be several of her friends. A shelf in the middle of the bookcase contained pictures that were perhaps ten years old, of Jake with three people, who Tori presumed to be his sister Cindy and their parents. There were also several pictures of just Jake and Cindy. She quietly made her way down the wide corridor dividing the main level of the house. To the left she glanced into the living room to see Jake, his back turned, sleeping on the couch. In the kitchen she could see a red light illuminated on the coffee maker. There was half a pot of warm coffee left. If she was going to be awake, she might as well do it with coffee. She took a ceramic coffee cup out of the sink’s drying rack and filled it halfway. Blowing to cool the coffee, she stepped to her right to look out the side window of the kitchen into the neighbor’s backyard. As she raised the cup to her mouth, she caught a flash of light and then looked up to the second floor of the neighbor’s house. In a narrow window, she saw a man who she recognized as the neighbor. She’d seen him in the driveway putting the garbage out earlier. He was holding his cell phone and appeared to be typing a message. After a moment, he looked up and to the Taylors’ house, waving the phone. Tori leaned forward over the sink, trying to peer out the kitchen window to look up to her right but she had no angle to see up to the second floor. She was aware of only one person being up there. Tori set her cup softly on the counter and walked back to the front of the house, quietly opened the front door, slipped out onto the front stoop, and then pulled the door gently closed. She turned to her right, stepped over some bushes and flowers that were planted along the sidewalk and front step, and then made her way around the south side of the house and into the backyard. Jutting out from the northwest corner of the house was an expansive deck. Crouching down low, using the spindled deck railing as cover, she picked her way along to the corner of the deck and then peered around it and up to the second floor of the Taylor house. As she’d expected, she saw Erica in the window with her phone, looking over to her neighbor.

Will Braddock, chief detective for the Shepard County Sheriff’s Department, had already done the onsite stop to where they have found evidence of Lash. At that time he had begun his routine lead of the two additional officers who would work the case with him. Readers learn more about Will as Tory does, later in the book, as she realized that she had given little notice to his credentials and background because of her intense desire to begin to compare the two cases. And, BTW, this book follows true on a romantic interest becoming a part of their lives, although, it was not a primary part of the plot.

“Cal, he can’t⁠—” “Victoria, please sit down.” “Cal!” “Sit down and shut up, now!” Tori froze, stunned. In the entirety of her life, she’d never heard Cal raise his voice like that to anyone. Sheepishly, she did as she was told...

Tori mumbled, “What are we going to do?” “Go back to my place and strategize while we still have some time before we have to sing “Ave Maria” in five-part harmony.”

This became a personal favorite for me for a number of reasons. As the subtitle indicates, it is addictive even though I was unable, because of my fall, to read as long as I normally do. But perhaps, from that, I was able to ponder exactly what was so intriguing about the story--for surely abuse of girls is nothing new, sad to say... For one, the book was written by a man; I wanted to see how he treated the topic that was routinely covered by women writers. I found little difference, thankfully, because I don't think this is a topic that is in any way, sexist in nature, meaning that I believe that most men are as concerned about ridding our world of such terror as women are. It was, however, by reading at this time when so much news is in the headlines about the release of the Epstein files, it created a comparison of the villain in this book against those that have thus far been identified as active participators in this cult-like crime wave that has gone on for so many years and included a documented number of over 1000 victims, thus far.

The tenacity exhibited in those characters working on the cases within this book certainly supports the caliber and intensity of those congressional and other men (and women) who are working diligently to provide some semblance of justice for those innocents who were taken into a world in which they were forced to be involved. I, for one, continue to read such books in the hope that one day we can figure out just "why" some choose to use force against those who should be loved and cherished...

This book certainly deserves your attention!

GABixlerReviews