Story Statement:
Protagonist’s Mission: Find and rescue a disappeared teenager from the clutches of a murderous Appalachian crime family.
Antagonist:
Richard Willeford has long enjoyed his reputation as the most generous, respected, and wealthiest of Cincinnati’s patriarchs. But all along, he has been a terrible spendthrift, only maintaining his lifestyle and standing by using up the vast wealth created by his illustrious forefathers, leaving himself secretly broke and in serious debt. Two years ago, loath to be exposed as unworthy of his family’s legacy, Richard embezzled $3.2 million from the financial technology company founded by his son, Dickie, framing him in turn for the crime. Dickie has spent the past two years as a fugitive, eking out a living as a virtual skip tracer, all the while trying to figure out who framed him. Now, broke again and under threat of exposure by an illegitimate son (Marion), Richard uses his former mistress (Meri), a drug cartel, and an enforcer to manipulate Dickie, Marion and Meri onto the Appalachian compound of the murderous Slacum crime family, where Richard has arranged for all of them to be slaughtered. His objective: sell a newly developed, hyper-potent marijuana strain possessed by the Slacums to the cartel in order to maintain the lifestyle and standing he feels is his birthright.
Title:
Darkness Disappears
The Universal Truth of Exile
Close Your Eyes and Disappear
Comparables:
Genre: Crime Thriller
Dennis Lehane, Kenzie and Gennaro series: Hard boiled crime action combined with a setting (Dorchester for Lehane, Cincinnati for me) that is a much of the story as the characters it begets.
Kristin Lepionka, The Last Place You Look: Involves a P.I. with addiction issues who doesn’t want to work looking for a voluntarily disappeared person in Ohio. Deals with race and family issues. First in a series.
Logline:
Eking out a living as a virtual skip-tracer after being framed for embezzlement, fugitive political family scion Dickie Willeford is drawn into the open by a distraught mother desperately searching for her disappeared son.
Inner Conflict/Secondary Conflict:
Inner Conflict: Dickie is wanted for embezzlement and wire fraud by the FBI and lives a disappeared life as a fugitive as a result. Drawn into the field by a distraught mother searching for her son, Dickie is susceptible to being picked up by law enforcement for even the most minor infraction—even getting pulled over for speeding will land him behind bars for five to ten.
Secondary Conflict: Dickie harbors the secret that his illustrious forefathers were all criminals who changed the destiny of German Americans in Cincinnati over the last century. Even while living as a wronged fugitive, Dickie is determined not to turn to crime like the men who came before him. Unable to ferret out the identity of the person who framed him, and cutoff from his father—the only law-abiding Willeford in the last century—Dickie is near-penniless, depressed, and on the brink of making the big mistake. Dickie’s inner turmoil comes to a boil when he discovers clues that point to his father, the current family patriarch, as the embezzler.
Setting:
Dickie lives with the generational guilt that his forefathers built the family’s immense wealth by stealing businesses from proud German Americans in Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine district during the first and second world wars. At the same time a near-broke Dickie is an exile from the city’s wealthiest suburban neighborhood, hiding in plain sight across the tracks in the most run-down area of his hometown. As Dickie uncovers clues to the missing teen’s whereabouts, his journey takes him to a forgotten underground lager cellar in the city’s brewery district; the cramped confines of his father’s former mistress; a Northern Michigan playground for the uber-rich; the basement home of his father’s African-American, bitter former chauffer; the gilded, elite country club he’s been banished from; the longtime family mansion where he confronts his father; and finally to the terrifying Appalachian compound of the murderous Slacum crime family. Not only is Dickie in jeopardy of arrest everywhere he goes, but each setting underscores the trappings Dickie came from, what he’s lost, and what dangers lie in front of him.
