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Distributed for ForeEdge

In the Evil Day

Violence Comes to One Small Town

Distributed for ForeEdge

In the Evil Day

Violence Comes to One Small Town

On the afternoon of August 19, 1997, John Harrigan—owner and publisher of the News and Sentinel newspaper in Colebrook, New Hampshire—arrived at his building to find the woman he loved lying dead in the parking lot. Lawyer Vickie Bunnell had been shot and killed by a local carpenter wielding an assault rifle. By then, three more people were already dead or dying. More mayhem was to ensue in an afternoon of plot twists too improbable for a novel. The roots of the incident stretch back twenty-five years, with tendrils deep in the history of New England’s North Country. These bloody events shocked America and made headlines across the world. Hundreds of local citizens became unwilling players in the drama—friends and colleagues of the dead, men and women who were themselves real or potential targets, along with their neighbors in law enforcement—but the town and its inhabitants were never passive victims. From the first shot fired that day, they remained courageously determined to survive. This is the story of that town, those people, and that day. In the Evil Day is a moving portrait of small-town life and familiar characters forever changed by sudden violence.

336 pages | 6 x 9 | © 2015

Criminology


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Table of Contents

Preface • Acknowledgments • PART ONE • The Noonday Owl • “The Sweet Smell of Newsprint” • Death or High Water • Decent, Sane, and Simple • The Rest Is Blank • The Reasons of the Heart • Code 3 • PART TWO • When Both Answers Are Wrong • In These Days of Carnage • Kill Your Blues • Going to War • By the Grace of God and Valhalla • No Inkling of Cat and Mouse • Like the Brush of a Wing • “This Is What We Do” • Patient in Affliction • PART THREE • The Armor of God • Time Is the Fire • Fond Blue Hope • Epilogue • Sources

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