The Sins of Eden: Murder in the Park

A sadistic serial killer is on the loose in the once idyllic community of Eden Beach. In the summer of 1973, Michael Reese and his friends are looking forward to their senior year of high school until two dead bodies are found on the lawn of their favorite neighborhood park. Brothers, Phillip and Johnny Mulu, have been murdered and their friends, a newly formed but vicious gang born in the Oakwood Housing Projects, go on the rampage, looking for justice. Anybody who knew the two brothers said the murders had to have something to do with gangs since Johnny, known as the Cookie Monster, had been running with one gang or another since junior high. They figured Phillip the more level headed of the two was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. But when Mike’s little sister, Maddie, overhears a conversation hinting that Phillip, the ladies’ man, may have had a sugar mama, it changes the face of the game. Enemies of the two brothers start to disappear or turn up dead and, as the bodies pile up, Mike and his two best friends find themselves on opposite sides of the war. When Jesse Jordan and Terrence ＂T-Money＂ Mitchell join the Oaktown Boys they abandon their friendship with Mike which began way back in grade school. Even with his other friends, new father Manny Ortega, gentle giant Sonny Mulu or spoiled, obnoxious football teammate Derek Daniels, Mike feels lost and alone without the other two. Because all of the murder victims are drug dealers, gang members or both, people are quick to blame the Oaktown Boys and their allies while others start to believe the killer is a vigilante, waging his own war against the scourge that has tainted their little piece of heaven. Recently discharged Vietnam vet, Detective Paul Driscoll is assigned to the case. After receiving an anonymous tip about a secret meeting at a waterfront bar that doubles as a bookmaking shack, Driscoll has reason to believe that the murderer is a student at John F. Kennedy High. As he digs deeper into the crimes, Driscoll begins to uncover the unsavory secrets of the city’s rich and powerful and puts his own life, and the lives of anyone who tries to help him, in jeopardy. It takes all his wits to keep himself, his witnesses and informants alive as Blue becomes all too real. As they grow into adulthood, Mike Reese and his friends try to go on with their lives but find that they are haunted by the unsolved murders. As they piece together clues from the decades-long, on-going crimes, they uncover facts that lead to the arrest and shocking truth about one of their own.

Patricia Hickman-Lampley was born and raised in Compton, California. She is the middle child of seven, the mother of three adult daughters and the grandmother of (soon to be) six grandchildren. She has an AAS in Journalism from Los Angeles City College, and has had a love of writing ＂since the womb.＂ She is interested in researching and writing about her African-American ancestry as well as writing stories for the young and young at heart. Ms. Hickman-Lampley has been married to her husband, James, for 26 years and still lives with him in Southern California. This is her first novel.