Sacred Trust
MIRA Books, May, 2000
ISBN # 1-55166-586-7
When Abby Northrup's best friend, Marti Bright, is found nailed to a homemade wooden cross on a windswept hill in Carmel, California, Abby is thrust into a nightmare she may never escape from alive.
Compelled by grief and shock, she begins to piece together what happened to the woman she loved like a sister. With her marriage to an influential politician in tatters and her "perfect life" only a carefully fabricated illusion, Abby focuses instead on Marti - probing their past, the time the two friends spent in a convent, and the secrets they'd kept all these years.
But as Abby reaches further and further into the maze of Marti's last days, she realizes that the woman she thought she knew so well was keeping secrets from her - and that her own life is linked to her friend's in ways she never imagined . . . in ways that could make her a vengeful killer's next victim.
Question: From what dark, demented corner of Meg's mind did this thriller - complete with crucifixion and trepanning (boring holes in a victim's skull) - spring?
Well, in my defense, I started out my writing career by writing five mysteries - all in the Jessica (Jesse) James mystery series. Then I moved on to thrillers. In mysteries and thrillers, the darker the better.
SACRED TRUST is a thriller, but it also has nuns and a really great, sexy, police detective in it. That's because, as in all my books, I like to write about relationships. I also like to write about cops. In my Jessica James mystery series, Jesse has a mafia lover and a cop who loves her, just waiting in the wings. I'm not writing Jesse books right now, but I always feel her over my shoulder, telling me to put romance and sex in my books so she can still live vicariously through me.
The one thing I really miss about Jesse is her sense of humor. In thrillers, especially if they're about child abuse, kidnapped children, surviving an earthquake, etc., it's a bit more difficult to fit in humor. Readers who have read my Jesse books, however, and now my suspense/thrillers, tell me she lurks in every one of them, popping up now and then to speak her peace. Well, she would! Jesse never could keep her big mouth shut.
SACRED TRUST was fun to write. I was living in Carmel at the time, and could visit all the fascinating places I wrote about in the book - including Clint Eastwood's Mission Ranch Inn (and the Hogsbreath, before it closed). Clint's wife, Dina Ruiz, had been an anchor on local television, and she still filled in now and then. The whole Carmel area was rife with celebrities and great restaurants, the view was great and the coastline lovely to walk along. If one could rent more than a tool shed at $1,000 a month, or buy a home for less than six million, I might still be there. But, oh well . . . I got another book, GATHERING LIES - not to mention an earthquake - out of moving to the Great Northwest. One accepts one's inspiration wherever one can find it!
"Meg O'Brien has written another exhilarating thriller . . . the exciting story line contains numerous twists and turns that leaves the reader wondering what will happen next. In the hands of a lesser talent, the lead protagonist would be a victim, but Ms. O'Brien turns her into an intrepid but frightened survivor. SACRED TRUST is a powerful work that should reach all the bestseller lists."
Harriet Klausner
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