Every Secret Thing

Acknowledgments

This is a work of fiction. I am grateful to Bill Toohey, Gary Childs, and David Simon for helping me with the technical aspects of police work. Joan Jacobson and Lisa Respers told me what I was getting right (and what I was getting wrong) about our hometown and its inhabitants. Susan P. Leviton, director of Maryland Advocates for Children and Youth, provided a key piece of information about the state’s juvenile system. But I have used all this research for my own ends to write a work of fiction. If there has ever been a case like this in the history of Maryland, I am wholly ignorant of it.

Special thanks to Sally Fellows and, by extension, the virtual clan to which we belong, for encouraging me to write this book.