Flowering Judas

Flowering Judas is a mystery novel by the American writer Jane Haddam, published in 2011. It is one of her books about the former FBI agent Gregor Demarkian.

Twelve years before the novel begins, Chester Morton disappeared from his home town of Mattuck, New York, leaving no trace and never being heard from again. In all the years since, his mother has kept the search for him going: she has paid for a billboard overlooking the local community college, put up fresh flyers every week and pressed every law enforcement agency she could persuade to listen to her.

Her determination made Chester's disappearance a very public case, and it has also done real damage to her family, to her other children and to herself. Then Chester's body is found, hanging from the same billboard that has been advertising his disappearance for twelve years.

The corpse is recent, which means Chester was alive somewhere until very lately, and the local police, under pressure and short of resources, ask Gregor Demarkian to help them. What he has to work out is what actually happened all those years ago, and why the answers were never where the search was looking.