Shadow Fade

If you're truly insane, do you know it?
You may toil at science and art and any manner of worthy pursuits. You may work for the betterment of man and fellow creatures. Perhaps you attract other psychotics? If so, do you know they're crazy too? Strangely, life for those thus afflicted can also be quiet, contemplative, cerebral, even idyllic ... until people start dying.

This is the story of three such people.

The French Riviera. One of the most exciting and glamorous spots on Earth. Money, dazzling hotels and restaurants, yachts worth millions, villas worth far more. A living clich, populated by assorted characters ranging from millionaires, to movie stars, to despots, to charlatans, to artists ... and murderers. Saints, sinners, schizos and sun-seekers, and a great deal more. A land alive with beauty, culture and history, despite all the glitz.

Coirn sur Mer. At the western margin of the Riviera lies the picture-postcard village of Coirn. A neighbor to nearby St. Tropez, yet far removed from the glitz, the glamour, and the money. A breathtaking medieval village extravagantly adorned with flowers, nestled in a tiny valley opening onto the sea. Beautiful. Quiet. Peaceful and recently quite deadly.

Katherine Susan Day Woods. American. Wealthy. Intelligent. Lovely and wonderfully happy. A contented resident of Coirn, immersed in the snug warmth of a fine marriage, a beautiful estate, amongst good friends. A fairytale life framed in a fairytale village on the Cte d'Azur.

In the course of but a few weeks, her town, her home, her marriage, her life, darken under a cloud of savage murders and a very singular insanity. She finds, to her horror, she lies at the nexus of these atrocities. Soon she discovers she also lies at the core of their deliverance. Then her crisis escalates into a very real, very palpable danger. Remarkably, she concludes salvation lies in yet, another murder. A dark tale, with an enlightened approach to human frailty, describing the twilight journeys of three people who (often foolishly) believe they are finding their way....