TUESDAY SPARKS: “THE CUTAWAY”

Welcome to another Tuesday celebrating bookish events, First Chapter/Intros, hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea; and Teaser Tuesdays hosted by The Purple Booker.

Today’s feature is my current read, an ARC from Amazon Vine:  The Cutaway, by Christina Kovac, is a striking debut that will haunt you long after you reach the last page.

 

Intro:  It began with someone else’s story.  In the beginning, a woman went out to meet a man, and on her long walk, she disappeared.  I didn’t know the woman.  I’d never met her.  But I could see her clearly in my mind, walking the streets of Georgetown, her heels striking the sidewalk to the percussive music booming out of city bars.  That same path I’d traveled many times myself.

Her married name was Evelyn Carney.  She’d been born a Sutton, small town country club people hailing from the cold north.  I didn’t discover much about her people, except they seemed to have no time for her or to care very much about what she did, and when she disappeared, gave a collective shrug.  Had she fled them, or was she like so many other young women, women like me, who’d come to D.C. with dreams of making herself anew?  She had none of the typical means to success in the District, no powerful sponsor or academic prowess or massive wealth.  She had no family connections, either.  But she had ambition and a powerful appeal to men, and she wasn’t afraid to use either.

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Teaser:  The dashboard clock in my car read 11:48, which meant, if I had any hope of catching up with Ben, my next stop would be one of the northwest bars featured in his night life.  Ben’s philosophy boiled down to this:  people were pack animals and it was unnatural for such an animal to be alone. (p. 89).

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Synopsis:  When brilliant TV news producer Virginia Knightly receives a disturbing “MISSING” notice on her desk related to the disappearance of a beautiful young attorney, she can’t seem to shake the image from her head. Despite skepticism from her colleagues, Knightly suspects this ambitious young lawyer may be at the heart of something far more sinister, especially since she was last seen leaving an upscale restaurant after a domestic dispute. Yet, as the only woman of power at her station, Knightly quickly finds herself investigating on her own.

Risking her career, her life, and perhaps even her own sanity, Knightly dives deep into the dark underbelly of Washington, DC business and politics in an investigation that will drag her mercilessly through the inextricable webs of corruption that bind the press, the police, and politics in our nation’s capital.

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What do you think?  Does it grab you, making you want to keep reading?

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