Robbed Blind

"In Robbed Blind, a zombie-masked robber is taunting the tattered mill city of Clarkston, Maine. Enter freelance investigative reporter Jack McMorrow, on track of a story about the besieged community for the New York Times. Immersing himself in the overnight world of store clerks and shelf stockers, McMorrow encounters Sparrow, a blue-haired pierced-up convenience store worker caring for her dying punk-rocker father Riff, and Sparrow's night-shift friend Raymond, a reclusive collector of statues from the now-shuttered churches of his traumatic childhood. Within days, Raymond is dead, tortured and suffocated beneath the life-sized crucifix in his cluttered bedroom (clearly a kinky sex crime, indifferent Clarkston detectives say). Sparrow is robbed, not once but twice, and fearfully confides to Jack-but not to the police-that she glimpsed the man behind the zombie mask. The Times backs out of the story after social media reports that their reporter is carrying a loaded Glock. "Guns are problematic now," his editor says. "This isn't the 90s." As his wife questions why yet another story has gone from assignment to unpaid mission, McMorrow rousts local meth-heads, shadows a jail work-release crew, presses complacent priests-all to find Raymond's killer and save Sparrow from the witness-snuffing robber"--