Noblesville native authors murder mystery set in his hometown

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A native of Noblesville has written his first fiction novel, and he uses his former hometown and Westfield as the setting for three murders that go unsolved for 30 years. The central character is an Indiana State Police detective whose family was impacted by those crimes, and he saw the killers just before the murder in his neighborhood.

William Oakes is the author of the just-released novel Chasing Evil, published by Barnes and Noble publishing. His early career was as a broadcast reporter and later a newspaper reporter and columnist. After retiring from his second career in hospital administration, he began his journey as a novelist.

“Writing a novel is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time,” Oakes said. “It’s a very different form of writing from journalism. It took two years of writing and rewriting to get to the final version.”

The book is a fictional crime thriller that describes Indiana State Police Captain of Detectives Conor Cavanaugh’s quest to solve a 30-year-old murder of a neighbor and an older couple in Westfield. Cavanaugh and his family live in Franklin, Ind. The story line also brings the killer to Cavanaugh’s home and family.

The book begins when Cavanaugh’s father is assaulted at a construction site east of Noblesville. Hours later Cavanaugh, then a 15-year-old, sees two strangers in his neighborhood. At dinner his father describes the men who attacked him and Conor realizes they are the men he saw. Within minutes their dinner is interrupted by sirens, and they soon learn a neighbor has been murdered.

Despite Conor’s eyewitness account, the murder goes unsolved for 30 years.

In the present, Cavanaugh is a decorated former Army Special Operations officer and now a well-known Indiana State Police investigator. On his way home one night he stops a strong-armed robbery. The suspect is killed in an exchange of gunfire and reveals a clue that connects back to Cavanaugh’s memory the day of the murder.

This leads him on a cross-country pursuit of the killers and winds back in Indiana. At a critical moment Cavanaugh must decide between justice and revenge.

Oakes, who lives in Franklin, said part of his decision to try to write a novel were the COVID restrictions that lingered into 2022 and 2023. He also got the opportunity to attend several author presentations sponsored by the Johnson County Public Library. After meeting and hearing programs by J.A. Jance, Jack Carr, C.J. Box, David Baldacci, and Craig Johnson, he was motivated to start writing.

He admits it wasn’t a smooth start.

“Retired Franklin College Professor David Carlson had a two-session class on writing a novel,” Oakes said. “I had about 60 pages written at that point. After his class I went home and deleted most of what I wrote. A year later he repeated the class. I was almost done and from that class I was convinced I was on the right track. Six months later I was talking to publishers.

“I thought it would be fun to write a novel with ties back to my hometown and build a cast of characters around people I covered and wrote about, got to know in the business world.”

Oakes added that his wife’s love of the Longmire TV series fashioned after Craig Johnson’s Longmire book series also played a role. They traveled to Buffalo, Wyo., in the summer of 2024 and he got to speak with Johnson twice and picked up some helpful advice.

It all came together in the spring of 2025. Since then, it has been months of the other work authors have to do to get their work published.

Oakes said, “When it is your first novel everything is new and you’re placing your trust in people you hope know the business, because I didn’t. But I look forward to seeing the response and talking to readers about the book and the effort it took to get where I am. I’ve already started writing a follow up novel.”

Chasing Evil is available through Amazon. Oakes also has a website, WilliamOakesWrites.com, where the book can be downloaded or ordered. The website also features an excerpt from the novel for readers to try. He also has a Facebook page where he hopes to actively engage with readers.