Strangers among Us: A Karl Alberg Mystery with Cassandra Mitchell - Hardcover

Wright, Laurali

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0684813823 ISBN 13: 9780684813820

Publisher: Prentice Hall & IBD, 1996

Synopsis

It's a misty morning on a misty beach, a day like many others, when young Eliot Gardener does something unexpected. He picks up a machete and calmly strikes down his father, mother, and ten-year-old sister, Rosie. Rosie survives, gravely injured. His parents die.
What causes the teenager to go berserk? He's not talking, especially not to Staff Sergeant Karl Alberg, head of the Canadian Mountie unit in the beautiful, coastal town of Sechelt.
Eliot's motives for destroying his family lie buried deep in his wounded psyche. Only when he escapes from a temporary detention center with a younger boy, Alvin, does he begin to focus on reality. The boys must find a way to eat and sleep. They must try to survive.
Karl wants to help Eliot or at least understand what led to the family's tragedy. But Karl has concerns of his own, when someone from his past arrives in town. His name is Jack Coutts, and he's a man burdened with malice, with guilt, and, as his lustful landlady discovers, with a gun. Wherever Alberg and his fiancee, Cassandra Mitchell, go, Coutts is there, watching and waiting.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

ithdrawn, homesick and angry, fourteen-year-old Eliot Gardener has been headed for trouble ever since his family moved from Nova Scotia to the damp, grey Sunshine Coast of British Columbia. But not like this. Not standing on the bramble-choked, blood-soaked beach where his parents lie murdered--and his sister slashed--by the machete he has turned on them...and can't remember why!

Some say Eliot is a bad seed. RCMP Staff Sergeant Karl Alberg doesn't buy that. But the case weights heavily on him, for he knew the Gardeners and he should have seen something coming. And now, poisoning the joy of his and Cassandra Mitchell's wedding plans, a piece of his own past--the survivor of another shattered family--is stalking him. Someone else he's failed. Someone who wants revenge.

And until he can lay to rest the madness of that past, Alberg cannot hope to enter the silent mind of Eliot, where a time bomb is ticking away.

Edition details

• Publisher: Prentice Hall & IBD
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0684813823
• ISBN 13: 9780684813820
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 252