The fourth novel in my Deadly Byways series, Victim Number Eight, is now available for preorder. The book will be released on October 7.
The Deadly Byways series is set in southwest Ohio in the late 1970s and early 1980s, an era before cell phones, GPS tracking, surveillance cameras on every corner, and many of the other technologies that have changed both crime and police work.
At the center of the series is Milton Jones, a seemingly ordinary tradesman who has managed to conceal a very different existence from almost everyone around him.
By the beginning of Victim Number Eight, however, the police know that something is happening.
Several people have disappeared along the back roads of southwest Ohio. The newspapers have given the suspected predator a name: the Bywayman. Detective Will Hayworth believes the disappearances are connected.
The police even have a description of the man they’re looking for.
Unfortunately, they’re looking for the wrong man.
A first date goes terribly wrong
Victim Number Eight begins on a cold night in January 1982.
Teenager Sharon Asher is on her first date with a boy named Trent Delaney. They have dinner at an Italian restaurant and set out for the movies in Trent’s 1978 Trans Am.
Then they stop for gas at an isolated Sohio station.
Before the night is over, Trent is dead and Sharon has disappeared.
Sharon becomes Victim Number Eight—the eighth person whom police believe may have fallen prey to the mysterious Bywayman.
Two investigations
On the outside, Will Hayworth and his partner, Jerry Anderson, are trying to make sense of the evidence they have. Unfortunately, some of that evidence is misleading. A possible suspect emerges, and the investigation begins moving in a direction that may take the police even farther from the truth.
Meanwhile, Sharon has an entirely different problem.
She is being held in an underground prison beneath a remote barn.
Another captive is already there when Sharon arrives. From her, Sharon begins learning about the man who has taken her—and what may have happened to the women who came before them.
Sharon quickly realizes that waiting passively for the police to find her may amount to a death sentence.
She will have to find a way out herself.
And then there is Judy
Readers of the earlier Deadly Byways books will already know Judy Jones, Milton’s teenage daughter.
Judy becomes increasingly important in Victim Number Eight.
I’m not going to say much more about that, because Judy’s role is one of the elements of the book that I would rather let readers discover for themselves.
I’ll only say this: Milton has spent years creating a system that allows him to hide what he does from the outside world.
But no system is perfect.
And sometimes the greatest threat comes from inside.
Deadly Byways continues
Although each installment has its own major story arc, Deadly Byways is a continuing six-book story. Victim Number Eight is Book Four, following The Dungeon, The Bridge, and The Bywayman.
With this book, the series moves into its second half. The police investigation is intensifying. Milton’s carefully maintained secrets are becoming more difficult to contain. And Sharon Asher is determined not to become simply another name on the Bywayman’s growing list of victims.
Victim Number Eight is available now for preorder. The book will be released on Amazon Kindle and in Kindle Unlimited on October 7, 2026
**View it on Amazon**
