Annie's Bones

In the fall of 1967, Grayson Melvin met the girl of his dreams. Annie Lineberger was so far out his league that he felt like she was playing an entirely different game, but somehow he won her affections. He couldn't believe his good luck while it lasted. They both were 18, but Grayson was a baby, and Annie had been around. She was beautiful, smart and funny. When she told him she loved him, he would have died for her, right then and there.

Instead, Annie died or at least disappeared from the face of the earth. On the same night when she broke Grayson's teenage heart by giving him his walking papers, she vanished.

Everyone believed he killed her. Without a body, though, nothing could be proved. And so Grayson Melvin lived his life. Kicked out of his university, he went from the Army and Vietnam to bartending to another college to newspapers, where he discovered that Annie s well-connected and vengeful family still had the power to step into his stunted life and punish him.

Then, in the spring of 2016, Annie reappears. Our at least her bones do, dug up by a backhoe operator clearing land for a strip mall in a small Virginia town. Grayson, now teaching at a community college in Richmond and creeping toward retirement, is back in a spotlight he has tried to avoid for all his adult life.

With the court of public opinion almost unanimously against him, Grayson goes back to North Carolina to try to make the past go away, with disastrous results. Then, he gets a call. A woman he doesn't know in a town where he's never been has found a ring his high school ring last seen in Annie Lineberger's possession. Grayson Melvin has one chance to prove his innocence, by chasing a ghost and figuring out what happened on that long-ago night, the one when he lost Annie.

Annie’s Bones (Murder Mystery)

By Howard Owen

The Permanent Press

ISBN #978-1579625221

Price $22.19 (Hardback)

Price $9.99 (Kindle)

224 Pages

Rating 5-Stars

“A Case That Will Keep The Reader Guessing”

I was given a copy of the book for an honest review. While excavating an industrial property for a new mall, human bones are unearthed. Bones that reopen a five-decade old murder mystery. The bones prove to be those of a missing college girl named Annie Lineberger, from a wealthy family. The suspect in the case was her college sweetheart, Grayson Melvin. He could not be prosecuted at the time because there was no body, but he was assumed guilty regardless. Now that there is proof of murder, the family wants the case continued, and Grayson must prove his innocence.

This is a well-written mystery of a cold case file, as the story jumps from present day back to 1967 and we follow Melvin searching for clues to clear his name or find the real murderer. Although this is a stand-alone novel, the reader is treated to the appearance of reporter Willie Black, the author’s main protagonist in another series of novels. Willie and other citizens come to Grayson’s aid even though everything points to his guilt.

Tom Johnson

Author of THE COBRA