Road to Rouen

It’s 1958 and the little county seat of Rouen is a long way from the gritty Los Angeles beat newspaper reporter Roy Cutter was working before he was fired. But he’s forced to return to his hometown and all its bad memories when his wife is found dead there in a car half submerged in the Illinois River. A huge life insurance policy appears that makes him the leading suspect. A young local attorney becomes his ally against the bullying tactics of the local police chief. Then he connects with Judy, an old high school classmate who, with her 12-year-old daughter Margie, gives him a taste of the normal family life he never had. As he works to clear himself and learn the circumstances of his wife’s death, he’s drawn back into contact with his wife’s powerful family and a conspiracy that pervades the town and reaches all the way to France and a secret society with a sinister purpose. A string of seemingly unrelated deaths become a trail of murder he follows only to discover he could be the next. In the end he must take drastic action to save Judy and her daughter. Haunted by his childhood in Rouen and his experiences as a Marine in the Pacific Theater of World War II, Cutter battles doubts and demons as his search for the truth forces him to confront the horror of his wife’s abuse and death.
Road to Rouen is author Jack Waddell’s second novel. The first, Tuesday’s Caddie, also available here, is a bittersweet love story spanning decades from the 1930’s to 1960’s that has received solid reviews as well as high praise in the Writer’s Digest Self-Published e-Book Awards with the judge saying “The story is one of great sweetness and sadness and lots of fun along the way. The back-story of a competition and the description of the thirties set the book up to be an exceptional read.” In contrast Road to Rouen is a classic noir thriller that rachets up the suspense in every chapter.