The Trapdoor

A reporter must overcome personal tragedy to cover a grisly assignment

The Dellacroce trial should be John Wells’s biggest triumph. After years of hounding the mob boss, the New York Star reporter has finally brought enough evidence to light that the city can’t help but prosecute. Just when Wells is about to dive into courtroom reporting, his editor pulls him off the story, dumping him on a human-interest fluff piece. The young girls of Grant County are killing themselves in droves, and Wells’s editor wants to know why these teenagers keep putting their necks in nooses. It’s a tedious assignment, but the normally combative reporter doesn’t protest. He knows how it feels to lose a child to suicide.

Wells chases the story in Grant County even as the hanging deaths rake up memories of his troubled daughter’s death. When the suicides begin to look like murder, Wells’s reporting puts his own neck on the line.