Frank Rath

Created by Eric Rickstad

When FRANK RATH turned in his detective badge, he figured the backwoods hamlet of Canaan, Vermont, was a good place to forget the past and raise Rachel, his teenage daughter, who’s recently started college. Do a little private eye work, keep out of trouble, nurse his bad back, and try to be a good dad.

But it wasn’t all Ben and Jerry’s, Holsteins and Phish concerts — turns out the Green Mountain state is a lot creepier and darker than he reckoned.

When a pretty teenager girl disappears, her ’89 Monte Carlo abandoned by the side of the road, and the local cops come asking for help, Frank soon discovers the Vermont woods hold secrets more evil than he’d ever dreamed, in his powerful debut, The Silent Girls (2014), which drew comparisons to Ian Rankin, Jo Nesbo and John Connolly.

Certainly, the opening prologue is one of the more disturbing ones I’ve read in a good little while.

Although it’s an odd series. Dubbed the Canaan Trilogy, the second entry, Lie in Wait (2016) didn’t even feature Frank, but instead focussed on police detective Sonja Test.

Frank did return, however, in the third book, The Names of Dead Girls (2017), alongside Test, as the two team up to protect Frank’s niece from a serial killer.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Eric Rickstad‘s first novel, Reap, was a New York Times Noteworthy Book. His short stories and articles have appeared in many magazines and he’s been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He holds an MFA from the University of Virginia, and currently lives in Vermont, and has continued writing crime fiction, mining the dark side of the genre. So far Rath has not returned.

UNDER OATH

• “The Silent Girls is Vermont’s own True Detective… Three-dimensional characters, a moody rural-noir vibe, and a compulsively readable story make this a stunner of a crime novel!”
  — Steve Ulfelder

NOVELS

• The Silent Girls (2014) | Buy this book | Buy the audio | Kindle it!
• Lie in Wait (2016; Frank Rath does not appear) | Buy this book | Buy the audio | Kindle it
• The Names of Dead Girls (2017) | Buy this book | Buy the audio | Kindle it

FURTHER INVESTIGATION

• New England Eyes
  The Gumshoes of Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island,  and Vermont (but not Massachusetts)
• Why I Needed To Write A Novel About Male Violence And Guns
  Eric  Rickstad on guns, pre-K, and the writing of his novel Lilith. (March 2024, CrimeReads)

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.