Anne Waverly, a 47 year-old professor of Religious Studies, delivers a lecture to her undergraduates. She doesn’t look like much: dowdy clothes, graying hair, overstuffed briefcase, and a cane to support her bad knee. But she’s an enigma to the FBI agent and the detective who watch her from the back row. They are here to beg her to help them infiltrate a cult.

No one would guess Anne’s tragic past. Eighteen years ago, she and her young husband and small daughter got involved with a cult in Texas. How could she know then that the cult would follow the usual trajectory of paranoia, isolation, and increased violence? All she knew is that she wanted out. She left the cult for few days to think things through. But her action might have been the final straw. Days after she walked out, everyone in the cult committed suicide or was forced to commit suicide. She returned to dead bodies bloating in the sun – among them, her husband and daughter.

Now Anne is a highly-respected university professor and published authority on cults. She’s not pleased to see FBI Agent Glen McCarthy who has sent her undercover before. Never mind that when he recruited her as a freelance consultant for the FBI years ago, he saved her from the ravages of guilt, and gave her life purpose again. She knows that on a certain level he uses her. Her undercover missions into cults in the past have been fraught with danger: the last one wrecked her knee, knocked out her front teeth, and cost some innocent lives (though she managed to help the FBI shut down the cult in time to save many more). Besides, every time she goes undercover, her perilous grip on her own identity slips a little more …

But Anne and Glen both know that she cannot turn her back on innocents in need. Now it seems that there is an ascetic group known as “Change” that has formed a community in the Arizona desert. Unlike most cults, these people look great – on the surface. They operate a fully-accredited school that they flaunt as a showpiece for outside inspection; they take in abused and abandoned children and mold them into productive youngsters. Most of the community members hold regular jobs in nearby Sedona.

But when you read between the lines … aren’t these children a little too quiet and well-behaved? What is the group leader Steven’s preoccupation with alchemy and, more disturbing, “cleansing fire”? In the wake of the Branch Davidian tragedy at Waco, the FBI is keeping a close eye on anything that even resembles a cult that might turn violent.

Now Anne must do what she does best: infiltrate the Change group as a wide-eyed spiritual seeker. This involves shedding her entire personality and assembling a new one complete with a new name (Ana Wakefield) and a new look (cropped hair, hippie clothes). She sets off in her little Volkswagen bus (named Rocinate after Don Quixote’s less-than-impressive steed) for Sedona. First, she will have to get accepted into the group. Then – somehow – she will have to access the secret inner teachings that usually take initiates a year or more of proving themselves to earn. This means getting the cult leader’s attention – without compromising her mission or her safety.

Little does she know how her heart will break when she encounters a little girl at the Change community who looks distressingly similar to her long-dead daughter. Is this a chance for Anne’s redemption? The little girl Dulcie latches onto her for much-needed stability in her life. Dulcie’s older brother Jason turns out to be a brilliant, yet troubled, teenager; proximity to him will bring still more risks to Anne’s mission. Yet how can she live with herself if she fails to protect both of them?

A Darker Place is a suspenseful read as the resourceful Anne matches wits with the twisted and desperate men who are drawn to cults in a mission that takes her from the wastes of the Arizona desert to the secretive countryside of England. You can find it on Amazon.com through this link: A Darker Place