Todd Thiede


Todd Thiede is a part-time writer from Elgin, IL. He discovered a passion for writing at a very young age. He would write stories just for himself to pass the time. His imagination is very vivid, sometimes too much so, but the stories he writes are fueled by his daily life. He lives in Elgin today with his wife and children.

Time Killer

Mystery/suspense

Max Larkin is an ace detective in the small town of Rockton, Illinois. He hasn’t had a partner for a while now and is beginning to like it that way. He is also plagued with a recurring and chilling nightmare going back to childhood that somehow is central in his life but almost impossible to explain. 

He is matched with a new partner, Jesse, a gorgeous young woman whose father was a cop and whose memory she is determined to honor with her good work.

At this time a serial killer with odd and bloody ways hits the scene. It soon becomes apparent that the killer is a psychopath with some personal issue involving the wasting of time. At every murder he requires the victim to pay him for his lost time. 

Since Jesse is the rookie of the team she has no problems taking a back seat in this investigation. She is a bit of an overachiever with a penchant for analysis and who is eager to please. Yet the dynamics between them tends to flare up once in a while. They start out by tracking this killer’s murders back ten and twenty five years.

For the most part they work well together and begin to gather clues on the case, which has shocked the small town of Rockton.

The sum total of the clues seem to suggest that the killer is a salesman who earns pretty good money and hates people who he believes are wasting his time.

The killer is revealed halfway through the story and then the task becomes catching him.

About this time Jesse buys a new car and her salesman is no other than Mike Hogan, the killer. She is a bit suspicious but is put off the trail. 

The story comes to a head when Hogan murders his ex wife for things he perceives that she has done to him. But by now the team is hot on his trail. When they catch him there is still a problem with solid evidence and as a result he is released since Max has a conflict of interest because he learns that Hogan is the murderer of his own father back twenty five years ago.

Max and Jesse are temporarily suspended and it looks bad for the case. But when, using Jesse as bait, they lure him into an attempt to murder her they get the goods on him.

This is a chilling and fast moving thriller that keeps the reader turning pages.
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