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Corrupt Practices

An attorney with courtroom stage fright must uncover the truth . . . and confront his own long-buried secrets.

Parker Stern’s legal career is on the rise. But when his mentor Harmon Cherry commits suicide, Parker begins experiencing stage fright so severe that he becomes paralyzed whenever he steps into a courtroom. Unable to work, he languishes at a coffee house that is owned by his former law partner (and occasional lover) Deanna Poulos.

His down time is interrupted when Rich Baxter, another ex-colleague, calls from jail and asks Parker to represent him. Baxter has been charged with embezzling millions from his church, a powerful cult that Parker despises. At their first meeting, Baxter surprises Parker by claiming that Harmon Cherry did not commit suicide, but was murdered by someone connected to the church. Parker doesn’t believe it until Baxter is found hanging in his cell.

Ultimately, Parker agrees to represent Baxter’s father in a lawsuit brought by the church. In the process of representing his client and uncovering the truths behind the deaths of his friends, Parker must overcome his own long-buried secrets and deep-seated fears.

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Dante’s Wood

A troubled psychiatrist turns investigator when a young patient confesses to murder.

Psychiatrist Mark Angelotti knows that genes don’t lie. Or do they?

Back at work after a devastating illness, Mark believes he has put his past behind him when he is asked to examine Charlie Dickerson, a mentally handicapped teenager whose wealthy mother insists he is a victim of sexual abuse. Mark diagnoses a different reason for Charlie’s ills, but his prescription turns deadly when a teacher is murdered and Charlie confesses to the police.

Volunteering to testify on Charlie’s behalf, Mark’s worst fears are realized when paternity tests show the victim was pregnant with Charlie’s child. Now it’s up to Mark to prove Charlie’s innocence in a case where nothing is as first meets the eye.

Not even genes—Mark’s or Charlie’s—can be trusted to shine a light on the truth.

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Styx & Stone

Ellie Stone is a professed modern girl in 1960s’ New York City, playing by her own rules and breaking boundaries while searching for a killer among the renowned scholars in Columbia University’s Italian Department.

“If you were a man, you’d make a good detective.”

Ellie Stone is sure that Sgt. McKeever meant that as a compliment, but that identity-a girl wanting to do a man’s job-has throttled her for too long. It’s 1960, and Ellie doesn’t want to blaze any trails for women; she just wants to be a reporter, one who doesn’t need to swat hands off her behind at every turn.

Adrift in her career, Ellie is back in New York City after receiving news that her estranged father, a renowned Dante scholar and distinguished professor, is near death after a savage bludgeoning in his home. The police suspect a routine burglary, but Ellie has her doubts. When a second attempt is made on her father’s life, in the form of an “accident” in the hospital’s ICU, Ellie’s suspicions are confirmed.

Then another professor turns up dead, and Ellie’s investigation turns to her father’s university colleagues, their ambitions, jealousies, and secret lives. Ellie embarks on a thorny journey of discovery and reconciliation, as she pursues an investigation that offers her both a chance at redemption in her father’s eyes, and the risk of losing him forever.

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See Also Murder

In 1964, a grisly murder is committed in the small town of Dickinson, North Dakota.

Erik and Lida Knudsen are found murdered in their bed, their throats slit. Two grown sons-Jaeger and Peter-live in the same house, but claim to have heard nothing while asleep in their rooms. 

Sheriff Hilo Jenkins is called to the scene and discovers a strange copper amulet clasped in Erik’s hand. Knowing that his friend Marjorie Trumaine is a skilled researcher and professional indexer, Jenkins asks for her help in investigating the possible meaning of the amulet with its unusual markings.

As she gets closer to the truth, Marjorie feels increasingly threatened, knowing the killer will stop at nothing to cover his tracks.

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The Survivors

Successful psychologist Cal Henderson has a busy practice in Washington, DC, good friends, and big plans for the future. But he can’t escape a terrible secret.

When he was a boy, his mother murdered his father and two brothers and severely wounded Cal’s best friend, Scottie Glass. Desperate to keep the nightmare at bay, Cal has turned his back on everything that happened that night.

Then on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the traumatic event, Scottie shows up at Cal’s office—edgy, paranoid, but somehow still the loveable kid he once was. Though their lives have taken very different paths, they both believe Cal’s mother couldn’t have been a murderer. She loved them too much, no matter what dark place she found herself in. They set off to dig up the real story.

In his search for answers he uncovers secrets about his mother’s life involving a defense contractor’s dark dealings, a nominee for U.S. Attorney with a questionable past, and a shady corporate billionaire whose sphere of influence seems to include everyone from the Pentagon on down.

Meanwhile, as Cal gets closer to discovering the truth, recovered memories of his childhood push him into a psychological tailspin.

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A Thousand Falling Crows

 

Sonny Burton was forced to retire from the Texas Rangers after taking a bullet from Bonnie Parker in a shoot-out. The bullet so damaged Sonny’s right arm that he had to have it amputated.

While Sonny struggles with recuperating and tries to get used to the idea of living a life with only one arm, Aldo Hernandez, the hospital’s janitor, asks Sonny to help find his daughter and bring her back home. She has got herself mixed up with a couple of brothers involved in a string of robberies. Sonny agrees to help, but is more concerned about a wholly different criminal in town who has taken to killing young women and leaving them in local fields for crows to feast on.

Just as Sonny is able to track down Aldo’s daughter, he comes to an uncomfortable realization about who might be responsible for the string of murders and races to nab the killer before another girl is left to the crows.

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Woman With a Blue Pencil

What becomes of a character cut from a writer’s working manuscript? 

On the eve of Pearl Harbor, Sam Sumida, a Japanese-American academic, has been thrust into the role of amateur P.I., investigating his wife’s murder, which has been largely ignored by the LAPD. Grief stricken by her loss, disoriented by his ill-prepared change of occupation, the worst is yet to come, Sam discovers that, inexplicably, he has become not only unrecognizable to his former acquaintances but that all signs of his existence (including even the murder he’s investigating) have been erased. Unaware that he is a discarded, fictional creation, he resumes his investigation in a world now characterized not only by his own sense of isolation but by wartime fear.

Meantime, Sam’s story is interspersed with chapters from a pulp spy novel that features an L.A.-based Korean P.I. with jingoistic and anti-Japanese, post December 7th attitudes – the revised, politically and commercially viable character for whom Sumida has been excised.

Behind it all is the ambitious, 20-year-old Nisei author who has made the changes, despite the relocation of himself and his family to a Japanese internment camp. And, looming above, is his book editor in New York, who serves as both muse and manipulator to the young author—the woman with the blue pencil, a new kind offemme fatale.

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Dig Your Grave

Detective Alex Mills turns to psychic Gus Parker to help him solve a series of baffling murders perpetrated by a deranged killer who leaves his victims’ bodies and taunting clues in the cemeteries of Phoenix, AZ.

A killer is on the loose, burying his victims among the dead in Phoenix cemeteries, and leaving ghoulish signs that warn of more evil to come. It’s a crude camouflage that has Detective Alex Mills stumped. As he has done before, Mills turns to his buddy, the reluctant psychic Gus Parker. His visions, as cryptic and baffling as they sometimes are, mean something.

But just as the investigation heats up, and Mills needs him most, Gus Parker goes missing. Rock ’n’ roll legend Billie Welch, Gus’s love interest, is frantic to find him and turns to Mills for help. Is this a case of a crazed fan who is trying to get to Billie? Is Gus’s disappearance related to the spree of cemetery killings?

There are nefarious secrets hiding in the shadows of the valley’s most well-heeled neighborhoods, and some of the most prominent residents have the most to fear.

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A Knife in the Fog

Physician Arthur Conan Doyle takes a break from his practice to assist London police in tracking down Jack the Ripper in this debut novel and series starter.

September 1888. A twenty-nine-year-old Arthur Conan Doyle practices medicine by day and writes at night. His first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, although gaining critical and popular success, has only netted him twenty-five pounds. Embittered by the experience, he vows never to write another “crime story.” Then a messenger arrives with a mysterious summons from former Prime Minister William Gladstone, asking him to come to London immediately.

Once there, he is offered one month’s employment to assist the Metropolitan Police as a “consultant” in their hunt for the serial killer soon to be known as Jack the Ripper. Doyle agrees on the stipulation his old professor of surgery, Professor Joseph Bell—Doyle’s inspiration for Sherlock Holmes—agrees to work with him. Bell agrees, and soon the two are joined by Miss Margaret Harkness, an author residing in the East End who knows how to use a Derringer and serves as their guide and companion.

Pursuing leads through the dank alleys and courtyards of Whitechapel, they come upon the body of a savagely murdered fifth victim. Soon it becomes clear that the hunters have become the hunted when a knife-wielding figure approaches.

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The Devil’s Wind

A historical mystery that blends nautical adventure in pirate waters with a locked-room murder mystery, featuring a pirate sleuth whose wits are as sharp as his blade.

1723—Spider John, longing to escape the pirate life he never wanted, has an honest seafaring job at last, aboard a sailing vessel, and is returning to his beloved Em and their child. But when Captain Brentwood is murdered in his cabin, Spider’s plans are tossed overboard.

Who killed Redemption’s captain? The mysterious pirate with a sadistic past? The beautiful redhead who hides guns beneath her skirt? One of the men pining for the captain’s daughter? There are plenty of suspects.

But how could anyone kill the captain in his locked quarters while the entire crew was gathered together on the deck? Before he can solve the puzzle, Spider John and his ex-pirate friends Hob and Odin will have to cope with violence, schemes, nosy Royal Navy officers, and a deadly trap set by the ruthless pirate Ned Low.