the dead man - 14. janey

by nick nelson

part fourteen of 31

for previous episode, click here

to begin at the beginning, click here

when janey masterson was eleven years old, she took a book out of the library titled the silver valley killer, by annette walker davis, the silver valley killer was in the adult half of the small library, on the “true crime” shelf. it was the second or third “grown-up” book that janey ever read, and she was captivated by it. she did not know, and would not have cared if she had known, that both the book and author were almost completely unknown, and would remain so. the book concerned a series of murders of three young women and one young man, all of them hitchhikers, and three of them “hippies”, whose bodies were discovered beside the highway near a small town near silver valley idaho. but the really interesting thing about the book, for janey, was that the murders were solved by the author of the book, who described herself as a “free-lance journalist” and was not and never had been a policeperson! it was revealed in an afterword to the book that the killer uncovered by the author was never charged with or convicted of his crimes, because of the cowardice of the authorities, but this only added to the effect of the book on janey. imagine, solving a crime all by yourself and writing a book about it! what were perry mason or miss marple or murder she wrote on tv compared to that! just some stuff that somebody made up! next