For six years, a serial killer has plagued Lowder County, taunting law enforcement and terrifying the population. All of the victims share a dark secret that dies with them. No one survives… Not until seventeen-year-old Gee.Drugged and wounded, Georgia escapes painting a bloody trail in the snow behind her. In the process of dragging herself to safety, she’s able to save the life of a second … a second teenage victim, Josie. But the first survivors of the maniacal murderer leave detectives with more questions than answers.
Gee’s memory blocks may hold the key to stopping a killer who has taken the lives of 12 people. As all parties struggle to find the missing pieces, the killer’s timeline is escalating and he’s straying from his pattern. Can the two victims team up with a local detective to stop the Catoctin Creek killer’s deadly spree? Or won’t they be as lucky the second time around?
“A taut game of cat and mouse played on a razor’s edge. One where you’re never sure who is the cat and who is the mouse. Lime Kiln Road comes at you like that car in your rearview mirror that’s been following you for too long, the one that keeps inching closer until it’s riding your bumper and there’s no escape.”
~Matthew FitzSimmons
USA Today and Wall Street Journal Bestselling Author
of The Short Drop, Poisonfeather, and Cold Harbor
Note: This novel contains frank narrative and dialog concerning sexual abuse, child abuse, rape, and serial brutality. Though not gratuitous, some content may be upsetting to sensitive readers.
This novel was originally soft released in September 2018 with a title of Broken Betties. Content, book matter, cover, and title have been updated.
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I got kinda tired of reading about the Sheriff’s chin, but the ending was jaw-dropping.
I really enjoyed this book and can honestly say I didn’t see the ending coming at all!
The first chapter of S.L. Shelton’s new thriller, Lime Kiln Road, grabbed me hard and wouldn’t let go. His writing is so forceful, so descriptive that I was brought to a barn in a desolate part of town, the air around me frigid, the atmosphere terrifying, and the plight of Gee and her best friend, Josie became my own as the two of them fought for their lives. What’s taken place there isn’t immediately clear, although the danger the two girls are in is palpable, and the fear they feel as they fight to save themselves made me anxious … almost sick to my stomach like only an intense and incredibly well-written scene can. The imagery and the sounds that Shelton put into my head as I read caused me physical discomfort … and pushed me to continue turning the pages.
As the story progresses, the reader learns more about Gee and Josie, and about the detectives that are working their case. High school girls have been kidnapped and brutally murdered in Lowder County over the past six years; and, although they are dedicated to finding the murderer, it doesn’t seem like law enforcement is getting any closer to stopping the killing spree. Gee and Josie survived their first run-in with the Catoctin Killer. Will they be able to do it again?
Lime Kiln Road is made up of every single thing a well-crafted thriller should be made of. It’s deliciously dark and eerily uncomfortable. It’s gruesome and clever, and Shelton allows you, encourages you even, to believe you’ve got it figured out. Make no mistake. You don’t.
Excellent book….gory but well imagined. Liked the characters too.
LOVED this book. It’s definitely not a mild-mannered story, but if you like the horror & thriller genre, you can’t miss this book. It Rocked right till the very last word!
A taut game of cat and mouse played on a razor’s edge. One where you’re never sure who is the cat and who is the mouse. Lime Kiln Road comes at you like that car in your rearview mirror that’s been following you for too long, the one that keeps inching closer until it’s riding your bumper and there’s no escape.
I strongly recommend this – with a caveat; it’s quite gory, and some of the subject matter is upsetting. It isn’t a “cozy mystery”. But then, in real life there’s nothing very cozy about violent crime, is there? Especially when it is sexually motivated.
The book opens with two teenage girls, Gee and Josie, in a barn on a winter’s day in what seems to be rural Virginia. They and their fathers have been subject to obscene acts of violence. Their fathers are dead, and they are only just alive. One is bound and cannot move. The other is about to bleed to death. It looks like the latest atrocity by a serial killer, who for years has abducted girls with their fathers and tortured them sadistically to death. This time, unusually, it’s two girls and two fathers. And very unusually, the girls have survived. But it seems they remember very little. Meanwhile, the killings continue, in vile style – and the survivors are in terrible danger.
Lime Kiln Road – originally published as Broken Betties – is gripping. And it’s got that quality of the best crime books – it keeps you thinking you know the end then thinking you don’t. I thought I knew everything fairly early on, but there was a nagging doubt in my mind, something that did not quite fit. I was right. In best crime-writer style, Shelton hits you at the end with what seems to be a dirty sucker-punch – except it isn’t, because if you’d been really paying attention, you’d have seen it coming. But Shelton’s too good to let you. This is a crime novel with real class, combining the noirishness of the American crime story with the sly mind games of a classic English detective novel. And as with Shelton’s last book, Hedged, you’re sucked in by multi-dimensional characters that you can be bothered to care about.
There are two things about this book that might be hard on the reader. First, it’s pretty bloodstained. Author S.L. Shelton gives us an oblique warning about this in the book’s brief foreword (itself an unusual feature for a thriller). He explains that he spent a couple of years as a Court Appointed Special Advocate, or CASA; these are a network of volunteers throughout the USA that represent the interests of neglected or abused children. He noticed, he says, “how quietly and unnoticed evil walks among us every day with a human face.” But he also noticed that there were always forces arraigned against it. In a way that is exactly what this unusual thriller is about: darkness, but also the fact that it never goes unopposed. The gore is in the book for a reason. And while it’s explicit, the author doesn’t wallow in it.
The second challenging thing about this book is its credibility. Would anyone really be able to butcher so many people and evade detection for years?
Well, yes. At the end of the book you do understand how it took so long to find the answer. In any case, this happens in real life. As a young man I was in England at the height of the Yorkshire Ripper murders. The Ripper killed at least 13 women from 1975 onwards and, despite being interviewed multiple times by police, was not caught until 1981 – and then by accident. But his total was modest compared to some. If one wants to confirm this, one can visit the Wikipedia page Serial killers.
But don’t. It’ll only depress you. Reading this taut, inventive thriller is a better idea. And if it gets to you a bit in places, don’t judge it until the end. As Shelton says, evil does not go unchallenged.
I think the book was a little far-fetched. I had my suspicions of who the murderer was too soon into the book, and I kept waiting for a twist at the end of the story, proving me wrong. I like the feeling of, “wow, I did not see that coming!” Not in this book.