Chapter One Riddles. Those are my specialty. That is, when I am not studying patterns. Or decoding enigmas. Some might say that solving puzzles is all I’m good for. That leaving my desk in the Jacksonville office of the FBI to interact with real people is not the best use of my time or talent.…
The first few pages of this arresting novel paint a picture of the heroine as a quiet young academic who uses the act of sentence diagramming as a centering exercise and basks when her untrumpeted genius is finally recognized by another. In fact, the adult Maggie Moore at the beginning of this book is so…
Chapter One WHEN BRUCE MESSANE’S PHONE WOKE HIM at half past midnight, he knew it couldn’t possibly be good news— good news never came this late. He tried to guess what calamity was waiting for him on the other end of the line. Best-case scenario was more supply chain issues and shipping delays, a constant…
Santa Monica’s Farmers Market Maggie is in great shape and understands the importance of eating local, fresh, and clean, even if she doesn’t always adhere to the philosophy. You’ll find her here most Saturday mornings scouring the stalls (and fighting the city’s top chefs) for exotic gems like Persian mulberries, heirloom avocados, fraises des bois,…
Chapter 1 At 92,000 feet, the Vulture suddenly developed a mind of its own. It dove like the hunter it was, screaming down through the stratosphere, looking for something to eat. Fifty miles away, from his chair in the control center at Groom Lake, a white rectangular box about the length of a shipping…
Elizabeth Heider’s debut novel, May the Wolf Die, sets a frenetic pace. It’s a thriller infused with insider knowledge—of complicated quasi-governmental machinations that underlay the plot as well as detailed descriptions of Naples. Heider is an American PhD physicist with considerable experience in the European arena: “Raised in Utah, she lived in Naples, Italy, for…
A Hunger to Kill is a fascinating and profoundly chilling account of how Detective Kim Mager, a real-life version of Clarice Starling, closed in on—and broke—one of Ohio’s most infamous serial killers, Shawn Grate. Read on for co-author Lisa Pulitzer’s interview with Det. Kim Mager. Lisa Pulitzer: What was the hardest part of writing your…
Reader, how I gasped! I go through a lot of mystery novels and thrillers, so very few plot twists truly surprise me anymore. The Return Of Ellie Black, however, had me almost completely wrong-footed throughout. I can hardly believe that this is Emiko Jean’s debut thriller. It’s so perfectly plotted and seeded, and I fell…
One of the hottest trends in crime fiction is seniors being murdered and/or seniors solving murders. Cheater is set in a San Diego retirement complex populated by considerably affluent retirees. How does the title of Karen Rose’s latest mystery fit the crime? A cheater is “a person who acts dishonestly in order to gain an…
Helsinki Police Violent Crimes Unit Detective Jessica Niemi is feeling more out of sorts than usual. Since the death of her mentor, she’s started to feel less in control of the schizophrenic hallucinations that have been her subconscious mind’s way of signaling that she’s overlooked something: a disconcerting if surprisingly helpful trait in an investigator.…
