MURDER AT WALDEN POND
By Al Blanchard

Middle School History Teacher Steve Asher is forcibly removed from his role of helping young people when he is charged with the murder of a student's sister. Asher is counseling a troubled boy, Petey Oliver, whose dysfunctional family is represented by Susan Oliver, a young attractive woman trying hard to keep her bright but disturbed brother out of trouble. Asher meets Susan over coffee to discuss ways they can help Petey, but when we see them together again he is fishing her body out of Walden Pond. Asher becomes a prime suspect in the murder after Susan’s diary is turned over to a hungry reporter naming Steve as her lover. In order to clear his name and regain his reputation, Asher is torn from his academic tower and forced into a quest to find Susan's real murderer. Asher struggles to survive in an alien hostile environment where someone has brutally murdered a woman he hardly knew and is trying to silence him. All the while he is being harassed by the police who suspect him, ostracized by the community, questioned by students and threatened with suspension by the school board for a crime he did not commit. The key to the crime hinges on a runaway boy and a politician running for Governor. Asher's quest leads back to Walden Pond where he comes face to face with a killer.

Like Steve Asher, the protagonist in Murder At Walden Pond, Al Blanchard has been a middle school teacher for a number of years. Many of his teaching experiences appear in the novel. Before teaching Al owned an art gallery, a music store, a restaurant and has run workshops teaching computer literacy to blind adults. His published short fiction has appeared in Murderous Intent, Pirate Writings, The Edge, The Advocate, Futures and numerous other magazines. He lives in Massachusetts with his wife and is currently at work on another Steve Asher novel. Go to the author's site: www.alblanchard.com

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“One of the best writers of mystery and dark fiction out there.”—Greg F. Gifune, author of Night Work and Drago Descending.

“A great read. Blanchard has created a believable, reluctant hero in Steve Asher. I judge mysteries by how much fun it is to hang out with the detective. Asher joins Spencer, Scudder, Gunther, Kinsey and Carlotta as welcomed company. I look forward to the next time I can teach, listen to tunes and escape danger with my new friend Steve Asher.”—David R. Surette, author of Malden

“Al Blanchard’s numerous short stories are consistently clever and well-crafted, and now, with Murder at Walden Pond, he has proven that his storytelling talents translate equally well to the novel-length yarn. It’s both a puzzling mystery and an insightful commentary on human nature.”—William G. Tapply, author of Muscle Memory and Scar Tissue

“Al Blanchard’s Steve Asher series brings to the crime genre one of the most reluctant detectives in recent memory. Teacher-detective Asher is full of human foibles and has a big heart for the students in his care. His curiosity about the unseen taps that place in all of us that doesn’t want to believe there’s evil in the world. And Asher’s wry humor is a triumphant sneer at life’s tragedy. Murder at Walden Pond is written in a breezy style that evokes character through dialogue. It also illuminates the peculiarities of New England through a shrewd observer’s deep laugh at those terrors that hover just beyond consciousness.”—Richard Sawyer, author of The Priest of Anguish: D.H. Lawrence’s Failure at Intimacy

“Entertaining . . . and the plot moves forward smoothly with enough twists to keep the reader interested.”—The Hippo

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ISBN: 1-930486-28-6
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