The Fourth Flame

One rain-soaked evening

A third staged murder recreates the candle scene from Edgar Vale’s The Hollow Men, including details from the unpublished manuscript. Vale realizes the killer has corrected the deliberate candle-order mistake he made in the novel, while Detective Ione Mercer begins to suspect the killings are tied to more than a book. A soot-written message and a resurfacing memory make Vale question whether he was truly alone in the mill twenty years ago.