Torment

‘TORMENT’ is a mystery novel set in the small fictional town of Marcville, Ontario. Marcville is a model bedroom town, and Westland High is its model of modern technology and academic life. But they are a city and a school like any other in Canada, filled with their fair share of cracks in the harmony of the social milieu, disarray in the security of family membership, and silent tears in the misery of individual lives.
When Kyra Whitehead, a beautiful and vivacious member of the football cheerleading squad, is raped at a team party organized to celebrate victory at a local tournament, no one anticipates the events that follow this single, horrific act. School staff and students alike become entwined in the destruction that always follows a violent act. Death soon becomes a part of school life. In a school setting where there are hundreds of staff and students, finding witnesses is not a problem, but defining motives and eliminating inconsequential evidence becomes a nightmare for the local police. Detective Michael Stewart and his crew of fellow officers are not even certain who the real victims are. And identifying suspects can only be resolved by realizing who the intended victims are, and then, who would want to harm them.
The string of proposed and discarded suspects reminds us, the reader, that we can never be certain when what we say or what we do will be interpreted in unexpected or startling ways. The story leads us through not only the trauma of lives brutalized by the bullying ways of others, but also into worlds where addictions to drugs and to gambling create their own definitions of the bully and the victim.