On the same night that Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, nine-year-old Charlie Olmstead jumped on his bike to see if he could get a better look. It was the last anyone ever saw of him.
After Perry Hollow Police Chief Jim Campbell found Charlie's bike caught up above a waterfall, he assumed the worse, and so did everyone else except Charlie's mother. Years later, Eric Olmstead – and famous author and Charlie's brother – has come back to bury his mother and fulfill her last request: find his brother.
To do so he goes to the current police chief and his former sweetheart Kat Campbell, and it isn't long before they discover that finding Charlie was his mother's secret obsession, and while she never found him she uncovered clues suggesting that he wasn't the only victim.
Todd Ritter was born in rural Pennsylvania to a bank teller mother and a father who dabbled in taxidermy. He grew up among Bambi-esque forests and wide-open fields straight out of the cropduster scene from North by Northwest. Appropriately, his two biggest influences are Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock.
A journalist for more than 15 years, he began his career as a film critic while attending Penn State University. Currently, he works at The Star-Ledger, New Jersey's largest daily newspaper. In the interim, he has interviewed celebrities, covered police standoffs and, yes, even written and edited obituaries.
He is currently working on his second Kat Campbell mystery, BAD MOON.