WHEN SILENCE SCREAMS by Mark Edward Langley

Since my third novel in the Arthur Nakai series When Silence Screams was released August 31st, 2021, good things have been happening. First it won 2nd place in the PSWA competition, then was nominated for 13 more awards. 

I was interviewed by three newspapers and did a lot of radio and podcast interviews. The latest is a newspaper interview with the Albuquerque Journal, since my novels take place in New Mexico. The novel resonates so much in the southwest and on the reservations across America because it concerns a missing fictional 19-yar-old—April Manygoats—who gets fooled by a fake online profile and soon finds herself lost in the world of sex trafficking. 

What was the inspiration for this story? The missing 5,712 missing indigenous girls and women of 2016. When I read about them and saw the missing fliers, I knew I had to create a story that would be a thrilling yet gripping mystery that would also raise awareness of this tragedy.

To the Native people this is a subject they take extremely seriouslyand deal with on a daily basis. I knew I owed it to them to be accurate. I tried not to be overbearingly graphic but leave the harsher world to the readers imagination.

And, yes, in the beginning I had a few Native people think that I was trying to profit from the lives of real people this scourge has affected. I was not. Every character is fictional, and the situations are contrived, but have their basis in facts.

Even the serial killer is based on an actual businessman form the early 1970’s. My goal always was to create a fictitious story that laid out the facts of what befalls these girls and women so that those who had never heard of this real-life tragedy could be made aware of the greater disaster that is not spoken of on national news programs or in the halls of our government, but in the homes and hearts of the families affected by it.

Above all, though, it is a mystery. And I don’t want readers to lose sight of that. Can Arthur Nakai find April in time? Or is he already too late?

TITLE:  When Silence Screams: An Arthur Nakai Mystery

REVIEW  "The third mystery featuring Arthur Nakai, now a licensed Private Investigator, is a dark, horrifying tale of kidnapping and human trafficking.  When Silence Screams is all but impossible to put down until the last page, and highly recommended!"  -- MIdwest Book Review

LINKS: 

https://markedwardlangley.com

https://www.amazon.com/Silence-Screams-Arthur-Mysteries-Mystery/dp/B09KN4JNDY

When Silence Screams (The Arthur Nakai Mysteries Book 3) by Mark Edward Langley, Paperback | Barnes & Noble® (barnesandnoble.com)

 

AUTHOR BIO: Mark Edward Langley has always felt a kinship with the American Southwest where his heart and soul were touched immediately by the beauty of the landscape and the wonder of its people. Langley is the award-winning author of the Arthur Nakai Mystery Series, including Death Waits in the Dark which won both as a finalist in the American Book Fest Awards in 2020 and was winner the coveted Feathered Quill Award for best mystery of 2021. He is currently writing his fourth novel of the series, The Iron River, due out August 2022. He and his wife, Barbara, divide their time between their home in Indiana and New Mexico.