Sunbury Press recently published Of Guilt and Innocence by Wellington author John Scanlan.
The story follows the abduction of 5-year-old Ashley Wooten from her own front yard, which rattles everyone in the quiet, upscale community of Boca Raton to their core, but no one more so than the little girl’s father, Tom Wooten. As the grieving father and successful businessman becomes desperately entrenched in the stalled investigation into his daughter’s disappearance, he will be forced to reveal secrets from his past, at the cost of his once comfortable life, in an effort to jumpstart the search to bring her home.
Meanwhile, in a seedy neighborhood in the town of Davie, an elderly murder victim is discovered and linked to the long-dormant “South Florida Strangler.” As clues breathe new life into the dwindling taskforce responsible for hunting the serial killer, a suspect finally comes into focus. As the taskforce zeroes in, the detectives searching for Ashley unearth clues of their own, bringing the same suspect into their purview. With both investigative teams certain the same man could not be responsible for all these crimes, yet neither willing to budge, it becomes a frantic race to discover which theory, if any, is correct before Ashley or another victim runs out of time.
Scanlan is a police officer on the island of Palm Beach. After moving south from the small, western New York village of Le Roy in 2005, he subsequently fell in love with South Florida’s tropical beauty and laidback lifestyle, which is the backdrop for his first novel, Of Guilt and Innocence. A graduate of Brockport College, Scanlan’s previous endeavors include training with the United States Border Patrol in Charleston, S.C., and working as a legal aid for the former Immigration & Naturalization Service in Buffalo, N.Y. He currently resides in Wellington with his wife and two young daughters.
For more information, visit www.sunburypressstore.com.
