Novels

Synopsis of Chaos Begins

By
Glenna Heckler-Todt
Returning to her hometown years after vowing that she would never return, Emily Romano finds herself embroiled in a murder investigation that threatens to reveal decades of hidden secrets. The revelation of these secrets, Emily hopes, will cure the townspeople of their “small town syndrome,” a social disease that keeps victims from reporting crimes and putting up with abuse because of the stigma that is associated with these crimes. Emily’s hometown of Middleville, Illinois, is a town in which gossip and betrayal are used as tools to maintain a stifling, twisted social order, an order that is thrown into chaos with each secret that Emily reveals.

When the reader first meets Emily, she is an eighteen year old high school student. Emily gives her impression of the community and how she feels like an outsider. She is looking forward to going away to college so that she can get out of the town that she finds stifling. The eighteen year old Emily vows never to return to Middleville once she leaves for college. Then fast-forward fifteen years and Emily is doing exactly what she vowed not to do—she is living in Middleville—having recently returned with her husband and daughters.

The real Chaos Begins with the murder of Mara Tierney. While getting a permanent from Rhianna Reese, the owner of the Curl Up and Dye Beauty Salon, Mara is given a fatal dose of the poison aconite via the perming solution. Emily, who owns a bookstore next door to the beauty shop, is visiting Rhianna when Mara collapses. When it becomes apparent to the women in the beauty salon that Mara is dying, Emily steps forward and tries to revive Mara. Not knowing that Mara’s perm was a deadly one, Emily comes in contact with the poison and is nearly killed as well. Mara’s murder sets the delicately balanced order of the town off kilter, leading to the uncovering of layer upon layer of secrecy.

Mara Tierney’s murder also throws Emily’s well-ordered life into chaos and threatens her marriage as well as her relationship with her mother, for whom other people’s opinions (the town gossips) mean everything. Regardless of these conflicts, Emily sets about proving her friend’s innocence. Along the way, she makes two new friends, Madeleine Burn, the ex-wife of a wealthy, yet lecherous cad, and Harry, the town oddball who turns out not to be so odd. Emily is also put at the mercy of a former classmate who as a teenager Emily had ostracized. She uses the local “hardened journalist”, a crusty old woman in her eighties, who may or may not have had an affair with Emily’s grandfather, as an investigative resource. And she rekindles a crush from her childhood.

Taking it upon herself to investigate Mara’s murder and clear her friend’s name, Emily becomes the nosy amateur sleuth, just the kind of person she hates, and puts her life and the lives of her friends in danger. In the end, the web of secrets is revealed, but the truth comes with a price that is too dear to pay.