Footsteps in the Snow

Lachman (The Last Lincolns: The Rise and Fall of a Great American Family) does an outstanding job of making the resolution of a horrific cold-case murder into a gripping page-turner. The murder case dates back to December 1957, in the small Illinois town of Sycamore. Two young girls, Maria Ridulph and Kathy Sigman, were playing just outside their homes when a stranger approached them, introducing himself as Johnny and offering to give the girls piggyback rides. Kathy ran inside to retrieve her mittens; when she returned, Maria and Johnny were gone. The search for the missing Maria engulfed the community, but ended tragically with the discovery of the seven-year-old’s corpse months later. It took decades for the killer to be identified, under circumstances that sound like fiction, with a dramatic deathbed revelation that set the stage for a prosecution more than 50 years after the crime. Despite the book’s length, Lachman paces it perfectly, carrying the reader along on a narrative full of twists, while delving into the tragedy’s impact on Sycamore and its residents. Photos. Agent: Paul Fedorko, N.S. Bienstock Inc. [em](Nov.) [/em]