A Penny For The Hangman by Tom Savage

Fifty years ago, a crime shook the island of St. Thomas to its core.  Two teenage boys, friends and sons of two of the island's most influential families, were convicted of murder.  Not just any murder.  Both sets of parents were killed at a dinner they were having together as well as the maid working at the house that evening.  The boys were unrepentant and quickly convicted and sent to separate prisons on the mainland for decades. 

Now, a movie has been made to acknowledge the fiftieth anniversary of the crime.  No one knows what happened to the boys once they were released from their separate prisons.  Did they meet up again afterward?  Were they rehabilitated?  Are they living lives of poverty or lives of ease?  No one knows, but Karen Tyler may have the chance to find out.

Karen, a magazine reporter, has what could be the scoop of a lifetime.  She is contacted by a mystery individual who asks her to come to St. Thomas to get the inside story of what really happened fifty years ago.  Karen is eager to make her mark as a journalist, and quickly accepts the offer.  She believes her mystery man is one of the killers and she can't wait for the interview of a lifetime.  The question is:  whose lifetime? 

Tom Savage has written a compelling mystery that brings memories of some of the famous teenage killers of the sixties; those like Leopold and Loeb and the men who were convicted of the crimes written about in Truman Capote's masterpiece, In Cold Blood.  The action is nonstop and the reader is thrown in and towed along in the aftermath of the crime.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.