M.D. Taverner

Mara Hiddenbridge, 29 year old film critic at The Villonia Voice newspaper is content to tuck herself away in a movie theater, to write screenplays that never see the light of day, and to quietly grieve the sudden death of her father. Content, or comfortably numb, perhaps.

Her walled-off world is penetrated when she witnesses a body being recovered from her favorite writing corner in Willow Bend Park.

Meanwhile, a Villonia Michigan Mayoral candidate she’s slated to interview about a controversial plan to draw the movie industry to the mid-western state, turns out to be Paolo Santini, the cocky, handsome contractor of Santini Family Construction, with romantic ties to her past that she’d hoped never to face again.

Further complications arise when a strange Scotsman and ex-cop, Gabriel Mason, approaches Mara in Willow Bend with suspicions and evidence that cast her in the center of a conspiracy with more twists than any movie she’s ever seen.