Spotlight on The Perfect Murder by Kat Martin @katmartinauthor @iReadBookTours

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Join us for this tour from June 22 to Jul 12, 2021!

Book Details:

Book Title:  The Perfect Murder (a Maximum Security Novel) by Kat Martin
Category:  Adult Fiction (18 yrs +),  344 pages
Genre: Romantic Suspense
Publisher:  HQN
Release date:   June 22, 2021
Tour dates: June 22 to July 12, 2021
Content Rating:  R. Some explicit sexual scenes.

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Book Description:

The eldest of the three wealthy Garrett brothers, Reese Garrett is in the middle of a major purchase for his multimillion-dollar oil and gas company, Garrett Resources. The Poseidon offshore drilling platform venture will greatly enhance the company’s value.

But when Reese is on a trip out to see the rig, his helicopter crashes, leaving him hospitalized and two men dead. It’s discovered the chopper was sabotaged, and Reese is determined to find out who’s behind the crash—and whether he was the intended target. Then, when his lover, Kenzie, is accused of her ex-husband’s murder—a man with a vested interest in the Poseidon deal—clues start pointing to a connection that puts Reese, Kenzie and her young son in the sights of a killer.

From the Texas heat to the Louisiana bayous, Reese and his brothers must track down the truth before the body count gets any higher.

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An Excerpt from The Perfect Murder

Chapter One

Galveston, Texas

Last Day of July

Seconds after the chopper lifted off the pad, Reese felt the odd vibration.  Along with the pilot and co-pilot and five members of the crew, the Eurocopter EC135 was headed for the Poseidon offshore drilling platform.

For a moment, the ride leveled out and Reese relaxed against his seat.  As CEO of Garrett Resources, the billion-dollar oil and gas company he owned with his brothers, he was always searching for the right investment to expand company holdings, the reason he was flying out to the platform.

For months he’d been working with Sea Titan Drilling, the owner of the offshore rig, to complete the five-hundred-million-dollar purchase, an extremely good value when the average price of a similar rig was around six-fifty.

The vibration returned and with it came a grinding noise that put Reese on alert.  The men in the cabin began to glance back and forth and shift nervously in their seats.  A sharp jolt, then the chopper seemed to fall out of the sky.  It climbed again, began to dip and sway, dropped then climbed as the pilot fought for control.

The pilot’s deep voice rumbled through the headset.  “We’ve got a problem.  I don’t want you to panic, but we need to find a place to set down.”

There was definitely a problem, Reese thought, as the vibration continued to worsen.  The chopper was out of control and the whole cabin was shaking as if it would break apart any minute.  His pulse was hammering, his adrenalin pumping.

Along with the men in the crew who rode back and forth from the rig every few weeks, he stared out the window toward the ground.  They were no longer above the heliport.  Clearly the pilot was looking for an open space big enough to handle the thirty-six-foot blade span.  All Reese could see were the rooftops of warehouses and metal commercial buildings.

The chopper kept shaking.  The crew was grim-faced but resigned.  The pilot did something to take the pitch out of the rotors and the chopper started falling.

“No need to worry,” the pilot said.  “We’ll auto-rotate down.  I’ve done it a dozen times.”

Auto rotate down.  Reese knew the concept, the technique helicopter pilots used to land when the engine failed.  The trick was to find a safe place to hit the ground.

Both engines went silent.  The blades were flat now, the wind whistling through them, tying his stomach into a knot.

“Brace for impact,” the pilot said.  Below them, Reese spotted an open flat slab of asphalt in the yard of a small trucking firm–the only possible landing site anywhere around.  Trouble was it didn’t look wide enough to handle the blades.

At the last second, the pilot flared the helicopter in an effort to slow the descent, then the ground rushed up and the chopper hit with a jolt that wracked Reese’s whole body.

For an instant, he thought they were going to make it.  Then one of the spinning rotor blades hit the corner of a building and tore free.  The Plexiglas bubble shattered as the long metal blades exploded into a hundred deadly pieces, careening like knives through the air, slicing into buildings and the cabin of the helicopter.

Reese didn’t feel the impact.  One moment he was conscious, then the world suddenly went black.

Chapter Two

Four weeks later

Dallas, Texas

For McKenzie Haines, her day as Executive Assistant to Reese Garrett, CEO of Garrett Resources, started as usual.  After a few minutes spent with her assistant, Kenzie began her early morning briefing with Reese to go over his daily schedule and discuss what he needed her to do.

Seated across the desk from him in his spacious office, she waited as he finished an unexpected phone call.  With his wavy jet black hair and amazing blue eyes, Reese was one of the best-looking men Kenzie had ever seen.  Keenly intelligent and highly successful, he was a combination of virile masculinity and brooding reserve that attracted women of every age, shape, and size.

She could still see the faint scar on the side of his head near his temple from the helicopter crash that had killed two men and put Reese in the hospital.

At the time of the accident, Kenzie had worked for the company only five months, but in that time, she had come to admire and respect her employer.  She could still recall her sharp stab of fear when his brother, Chase, had phoned to inform her of the accident.

Three days later, Reese was back at his desk, running the company with the iron control he was known for.  Unfortunately, even now, four weeks after the incident, NTSB investigators remained unable to pinpoint the cause of the crash.

Reese’s phone call ended and his dark head came up, his intense blue eyes swinging toward her, locking on her face.  No matter how she worked to ignore it, Kenzie always felt the impact.

“Where were we?” he asked.

“You wanted me to reschedule your visit to the offshore platform.”

“Yes.  I’ve put it off too long already.”

“I probably shouldn’t say this, but after what happened, I don’t blame you.”

The corner of his mouth kicked up.  “Maybe not, but I want this deal done.  We’ve been working on it for months.  We need to finish our due-diligence and make it end.”

“Yes, sir.  Would you like me to go with you?”  Traveling with Reese when he needed her assistance was part of her job, though he hadn’t asked her to go with him the day of the crash, thank God.

One of his rare smiles appeared.  “You want to hold my hand in case I get scared in the chopper?”

Kenzie laughed, a little embarrassed he had hit so close to the truth.  She liked him, admired him.  He could have died that day.  “I just thought you might need me.”

“Not this time,” Reese said.

But Kenzie had watched him these past few weeks.  The helicopter crash still weighed heavily on his mind.  The authorities were investigating and so was Reese.

Kenzie was certain Reese wouldn’t stop until he knew exactly what had happened that day–and why two good men were dead.

Buy the Book:
Amazon ~B&N ~ Indiebound
kobo ~ Google ~ Apple

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Meet the Author:

New York Times bestselling author Kat Martin, a graduate of the University of California at Santa Barbara, currently resides in Missoula, Montana with Western-author husband, L. J. Martin. More than seventeen million copies of Kat’s books are in print, and she has been published in twenty foreign countries. Fifteen of her recent novels have taken top-ten spots on the New York Times Bestseller List, and her novel, BEYOND REASON, was recently optioned for a feature film. Kat’s
latest novel, THE ULTIMATE BETRAYAL, a Romantic Thriller, was released in paperback December 29th. The final 2 books in her Maximum Security series will be release in June, COME MIDNIGHT, a novella was released on June 1st, and THE PERFECT MURDER, a novel in hardcover on June 22nd.

connect with the author:  website ~ twitter ~ facebook ~ instagram ~ goodreads

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Tour Schedule:

June 22 – Cover Lover Book Review – book spotlight / giveaway
June 22 – Locks, Hooks and Books – book spotlight / giveaway
June 22 – The Phantom Paragrapher – book spotlight / giveaway
June 23 – Brooke Blogs – book spotlight / giveaway
June 23 – I Read What You Write – book spotlight / giveaway
June 24 – Cheryl’s Book Nook – book spotlight / giveaway
June 24 – Sadie’s Spotlight – book spotlight / giveaway
June 24 – Mystery Thrillers and Romantic Suspense Reviews – book spotlight / giveaway
June 25 – I’m All About Books – book spotlight / giveaway
June 25 – Books for Books – book spotlight
June 28 – Nikki’s Bookstagram – book spotlight
June 28 – Lamon Reviews – book spotlight / giveaway
June 29 – Westveil Publishing – book spotlight / giveaway
June 30 – @twilight_reader – book spotlight
June 30 – Buried Under Books  – book spotlight / giveaway
July 1 – Viviana MacKade – book spotlight / giveaway
July 2 – Book Corner News and Reviews – book spotlight / giveaway
July 6 – Splashes of Joy – book spotlight / giveaway
July 7 – Literary Flits – book spotlight / giveaway
July 8 – Laura’s Interests – book spotlight / giveaway
July 9 – Jazzy Book Reviews – book spotlight / giveaway
July 9 – fundinmental – book spotlight / giveaway
July 12 – Amy’s Booket List – book spotlight / giveaway

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Enter the Giveaway:

THE PERFECT MURDER (a Maximum Security Novel) Book Tour Giveaway

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Not So Well-Behaved

Returning guest blogger Sunny Frazier, whose first novel in the Christy Bristol Astrology Mysteries, Fools Rush In, received the Best Novel Award from Public Safety Writers Association, is here today to tell us about her time in Newport, RI, and how the rich lived in the Gilded Age.

The third Christy Bristol Astrology Mystery, A Snitch in Time, is in bookstores now.

sunny69@comcast.net   //  http://www.sunnyfrazier.com

“Well-behaved women seldom make history.” So said Pulitzer Prize winner and historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich in a 1976 American Quarterly article. Actually, a version of it was coined between 1668 and 1735. Author Therese Anne Fowler used it as a title of her book about Alva Vanderbilt.

Born Alva Smith, she came from a Southern family left destitute after the Civil War. She married into the Vanderbilts, who were ignored by New York’s old-money circles. Undaunted, Alva set out to break the Gilded Age’s stained-glass ceiling. She wound up building 9 mansions and foisted her daughter on a duke—a common practice when rich Americans pawned their daughters off on impoverished aristocrats. It was a title traded for a castle’s upkeep.

During what was termed “The Gilded Age,” the wealthy built summer “cottages” in Newport, Rhode Island. These were incredible mansions, with each wife trying to outdo each other. The clique was dubbed “The Four Hundred” because that’s how many people fit into a ballroom. I bought a cookbook while I was stationed at the Navy base. One menu listed 19 choices of main courses and 13 dessert choices. I don’t think I could pull off the Escalope of Veal Saute a la Macedoine. I might be able to handle clam hash. Perhaps a Wickford Quahaug Pie since I lived above a quahaug shop.

      

It was 1973 and Newport was my first duty station out of dental school. I wrote home that the town was like “Disneyland without rides.” Many of us rented apartments instead of staying in the barracks. I rented an attic apartment built at the turn of the century. The street was paved with cobblestones. From one window I looked down on the village green and the tall ships at the pier; from the other window I saw the church where JFK got married. All this for $60 a month and an obstinate radiator.

We toured the beautiful mansions, went to bars to sing sea chanties and ate twin lobsters for $7. All this on my salary of $300 a month. Some of my friends rented coach houses; the men off the USS Forrest Sherman rented the converted kitchen and the top floor of a mansion where we played frisbee and flew kites on the lawn.

I enjoyed my time until I woke up one morning and the radio announced “It’s a beautiful 12 degrees out!” I started crying and couldn’t stop. I’m from California. I don’t do snow. That’s when I took a transfer to Roosevelt Roads, Puerto Rico. On New Year’s Day I was suntanning at Blue Beach. And that is a whole other adventure for another time.

   

Book Blitz: The 7th Lie by Tamara Grantham @TamaraGrantham @XpressoTours

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The 7th Lie
Tamara Grantham
(Chronicles of Ithical, #1)
Publication date: June 15th 2021
Genres: Adult, Science Fiction

Agent Sabine Harper is thrilled to receive her first mission—until she learns what it is. Turns out, all she has to do is save the world from certain destruction. And she has two weeks to do it.

Sabine survives her grueling training by the Vortech Agency, but now she must protect the world from a devastating solar flare by finding seven energy stones—cerecite. If she refuses, they’ll terminate her father’s life-sustaining cancer treatments.

Sabine is transported to an isolated civilization hidden beneath a dome. She assumes the identity of the invalid prince’s caretaker and finds herself strangely attracted to the prince. But she’s perplexed by this strange island’s many mysteries. The air smells mechanical. Every blade of grass is identical. The island’s dimensions are bigger than they should be. What Vortech told her may not be true. She may not even know where she really is. And someone doesn’t want her to leave—at least not alive.

Goodreads / Amazon / Barnes & Noble / iBooks / Kobo

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EXCERPT:

Freezing wind gusted as I stepped outside the facility. I pulled my hood over my head and followed Agent Logan through the snow.

“You ready?” he called, his frame hidden under bulky layers of clothing and a gray overcoat, a red-letter V stitched over the breast pocket.

I hesitated before answering. I’d spent half my night wondering if I’d made the right decision by staying. Finally, I’d sent off a quick message to Dad, telling him I loved him, I would come back. I was sorry about Mima June. My emotions were too raw to know what else to say.

“I’m ready,” I called back.

“You got everything?”

I straightened my backpack’s straps. If he was asking if I had all my material things, then the answer was probably not, as I was famously lousy at remembering everyday things like a toothbrush and underwear. If he was asking if I had everything in my head—all the knowledge of Champ Island, the Bering Sea, the weather patterns, the gateway cave, the dome and the little information we knew of what was under it—then the answer was yes. I hadn’t spent the last six months of my life in training for nothing.

“I’m good,” I yelled back.

He nodded, then sat on his snowmobile, pulled his goggles over his eyes, and cranked the engine. The roar mingled with the howling wind. I cast one last glance at the facility.

The stark metal building loomed against a churning white sky. A single red light flashed from the antennae reaching up into the storm, as if it were a beacon screaming for help. I wasn’t sure it had stopped storming since I’d arrived half-a-year ago. I’d had no idea what I was getting into.

My nerves on that first day had been unbearable. After joining Vortech and making the cut to elite status, they’d sent me here to the top of the world, to a tiny, unknown island north of the Russian mainland. A place filled with mysterious sphere-shaped boulders that pocked the unforgiving landscape.

That’s when I’d learned about the dome, and my Kansas way of thinking—of Earth and everything in it—had been shattered forever.

After cranking my snowmobile’s engine, I pushed the throttle. Snow spewed behind me as I sped forward and followed Logan. I allowed myself to revel in the rush of wind, the crispness of the air, and the taste of ice on my tongue, something unfamiliar after being trapped inside the facility, with only a few trips to the outside world on my survival expeditions.

We sped past the wreck of the old immigrant’s ship. Weathered wooden planks comprised its hull. In some places, the boards stuck up like the bones of a whale’s skeleton. Whatever storm had pushed it to the top of the world must’ve been massive in scope.

The ship conjured images of the pages of a book I’d read as a child. The Lost Shipwreck of Champ Island. The book opened as if I were reading it again. Black-and-white photos and their captions popping out at me. How the ship got here is still a mystery. The immigrants’ disappearance is a mystery, too. After fifty years of study, scientists are beginning to fit the puzzle pieces together. No bodies were recovered, and in extreme temperatures such as those found on Champ Island, their remains would’ve been easily preserved. Some scientists believe they may have found a cave to take shelter in, yet no evidence of such an event has been recorded.

Beyond the ship lay an expanse of snowy wasteland. I dodged sphere-shaped boulders, some as small as ping-pong balls, others larger than my snowmobile. A blanket of white covered their tops, as if to hide their secrets. Lines of text from the Atlas of Champ Island jumped out in my mind.

Perfect spheres don’t exist in nature. Scientists have discovered the boulders were formed by water. However, because of the extreme temperatures, there are no recorded civilizations living on Champ Island, and no conclusive evidence that the spheres were formed by human hands.

Ice crystals crunched under our snowmobile’s skis, bringing me from my thoughts. I shook my head. Sometimes this photographic memory thing was a pain. I couldn’t stay focused on anything long enough before a book page hit me out of nowhere, and my concentration got jerked from one idea to another.

A howling wind echoed through the expanse. This far away from civilization, I imagined what it would feel like to be a shipwreck victim out here alone, with the screaming wind and the numbing cold. Where would I have gone from here?

The void of white faded with the setting sun, leaving the world drenched in gray. As we approached the substation, only the blinking red lights gave any indication we were near the bunker. The roaring engines grew quieter until we shut them off, leaving me with ringing ears in the sudden silence.

Logan removed his goggles. “You good?”

“Fine,” I called back.

We got off our snowmobiles and headed for the entrance. I flexed my stiff fingers. Despite my gloves, the cold managed to seep through, straight to my bones, until numbness settled inside.

The black metal hatch loomed, a block letter ‘V’ etched into the plate. We trudged through the snow until we reached the keypad. Logan removed his gloves just long enough to press his thumb to the fingerprint pad. A red laser scanned his finger, then the pad turned green, and the hatchway opened.

Snow particles blustered around us. I stepped onto the metal grating and inside the bunker, then I walked with Logan down a metal staircase, our footsteps echoing with hollow clangs. The door sealed shut above us. Panic of being caged in weighed heavy in my chest, but I gripped the railing.

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Author Bio:

Tamara Grantham is the award-winning author of more than a dozen books and novellas, including the Olive Kennedy: Fairy World MD series, the Shine novellas, and the Twisted Ever After trilogy. Dreamthief, the first book of her Fairy World MD series, won first place for fantasy in INDIEFAB’S Book of the Year Awards, a RONE award for best New Adult Romance, and is a #1 bestseller on Amazon with over 200 five-star reviews.

Tamara holds a Bachelor’s degree in English from Lamar University. She has been a featured speaker at multiple writing conferences, and she has been a panelist at Comic Con Wizard World speaking on the topic of female leads. For her first published project, she collaborated with New York-Times bestselling author, William Bernhardt, in writing the Shine series.

Born and raised in Texas, Tamara now lives with her husband and five children in Wichita, Kansas. She rarely has any free time, but when the stars align and she gets a moment to relax, she enjoys reading fantasy novels, taking nature walks–which fuel her inspiration for creating fantastical worlds–and watching every Star Wars or Star Trek movie ever made. You can find her online at http://www.TamaraGrantham.com.

Website / Goodreads / Twitter / Facebook / Instagram

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GIVEAWAY!
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Book Review: Something Fishy by Lois Schmitt @schmittmystery @encirclepub @partnersincr1me

Something Fishy
A Kristy Farrell Mystery #2
Lois Schmitt
Encircle Publications, July 2019
ISBN 978-1-948338-79-0
Trade Paperback

From the publisher—

When attorney Samuel Wong goes missing, wildlife magazine reporter Kristy Farrell believes the disappearance is tied into her latest story concerning twenty acres of prime beachfront property that the Clam Shell Cove Aquarium hopes to purchase. Sam works for multi-millionaire land developer Lucien Moray who wants to buy the property for an upscale condominium. The waterfront community is divided on this issue like the Hatfields and McCoys with environmentalists siding with the aquarium and local business owners lining up behind Moray.

Meanwhile, a body is found in the bay. Kristy, aided by her veterinarian daughter, investigates and discovers deep secrets among the aquarium staff–secrets that point to one of them as a killer. Soon the aquarium is plagued with accidents, Kristy has a near death encounter with a nine foot bull shark, and a second murder occurs.

But ferreting out the murderer and discovering the story behind Sam’s disappearance aren’t Kristy’s only challenges. When her widowed septuagenarian mother announces her engagement, Kristy suspects her mom’s soon to be husband is not all he appears to be. As Kristy tries to find the truth before her mother ties the knot, she also races the clock to find the aquarium killer before this killer strikes again.

With all the attention in recent years on environmental issues, Something Fishy is topical as well as entertaining. It also happens to be a very good puzzler for mystery fans who love to do a little detecting along with the protagonist.

Aided and abetted by her daughter, veterinarian Abby, magazine reporter Kristy sets out to do two things, find the missing Sam and figure out who killed the fish keeper and why. Had Jack gotten too deeply involved in the contention between the aquarium and a developer over a piece of prime real estate? Before long, the duo come up with some intriguing leads but then another body turns up. In the meantime, Kristy is also highly suspicious of her mom’s new fiance who surely is too good to be true.

Enjoyable characters and a thoughtful plot made this a story I didn’t want to put down and I was actually kind of sorry when I came to the end. Other than occasional word or phrase choices that are a little odd, Something Fishy is well written and free of the flowery language so often found in cozy mysteries; in fact, I found myself enjoying the simple and comfortable flow of Ms. Schmitt’s prose. This book is my introduction to the author and I intend to go get the first one, Monkey Business, but I don’t know if she intends to write more in the series. I hope so!

Reviewed by Lelia Taylor, June 2021.

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Purchase Links:
Barnes & Noble // Kobo // Encircle Publications
Amazon // Indiebound

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An Excerpt from Something Fishy

CHAPTER ONE

 

“Something bad happened to Sam. I know it.”

Katie Chandler’s sea green eyes filled with tears. A sea lion trainer at the Clam Shell Cove Aquarium, Katie had been my daughter’s college roommate.

“Maybe Sam worked late and forgot to call,” I said.

Katie shook her head, her chestnut hair flying in the bay breeze. “No. He hasn’t answered my texts or phone calls. I stopped by his house twice too. No one’s home.”

Silence. I tried thinking of something helpful, or at least hopeful, to say.

“I called the police, Mrs. Farrell. The officer said being stood up for a dinner date isn’t enough for a missing persons case—that maybe it was Sam’s way of breaking up.”

I shifted my gaze to the whitecaps on the bay while Katie’s statement sank into my brain.  Perhaps the officer was right. I knew from my daughter Abby that the relationship between Katie Chandler and Samuel Wong had hit a rough patch.

The conflict: Katie, who served as executor of her late grandmother’s charitable trust, was donating six million dollars of this money to the aquarium’s expansion project, which included the acquisition of twenty acres of adjacent land. Sam worked as executive assistant to multi-millionaire developer Lucien Moray who wanted to buy the bay front property for luxury condominiums. What started off as friendly bantering between Katie and Sam had escalated into explosive arguments that had become increasingly personal.

But Katie and Sam weren’t the only ones embroiled in this controversy. The community at large had become like the Hatfields and McCoys. Environmentalists wanted the property to go to the aquarium where it would be used for breeding grounds for endangered species, an aquatic   animal rehabilitation center, and a research camp for marine scientists. Local business owners sided with Moray, hoping high end condo owners would bolster the area’s economy. I was writing an article on this for Animal Advocate Magazine. That’s why I was at the aquarium today.

Katie continued, “No matter what happened between us, Sam would never stand me up. He’s my fiancé not someone I picked up a few hours ago at a bar. Besides, Sam came around to my point of view. He had it with Lucien Moray. He hadn’t told anyone but me yet, but he was quitting his job at the end of the year.”

“I’ve an interview later this morning with Moray,” I said. “I’ll check around and see what I can find out. Someone in Moray’s office may know Sam’s whereabouts.”

“What if no one does?”

“Let’s take it one step at a time.” I glanced at my watch, then pushed myself off the rock where I’d been sitting, a task that would have been easier if I were ten years younger and twenty pounds lighter. “Speaking of interviews, my appointment with your aquarium director is in five minutes, so I better head inside. I’ll call you tonight.”

Katie sighed. “Thanks. I should get back to my sea lions too. We’ve a show at eleven.” She rose and stretched her small wiry body. “After the show, I’ll stop at Sam’s house again.”

Katie, shoulders slumped, wandered off in the direction of the outdoor sea lion amphitheater. I stood for a moment, inhaling the salt air while watching a seagull dive into the bay and zoom back to the sky with a fish in its mouth. As the autumn wind sent a sudden chill down my spine, I wrapped my arms around my body, thinking back to when Katie and my Abby attended college. Abby often acted impulsively, out of emotion, but Katie had always been levelheaded, never someone to jump to conclusions. What if Sam is really in trouble? The thought nagged at me as I trekked up the sandy beach and stepped into the building that housed the indoor exhibits.

I made my way down a long corridor, surrounded by floor to ceiling glass tanks housing ocean life from around the world. I paused at the shark tank and marveled at the grace and beauty of these fearsome predators gliding silently through the water, causing hardly a ripple. I would be back here soon. In addition to my article on the land expansion, I was writing a story on ocean predators.

I veered down the administration wing. When I came to a door marked  DIRECTOR, I glanced again at my watch. Ten-thirty. Right on time. I knocked.

“Enter,” a booming voice responded. I pulled open the door and stepped inside.

Standing in front of me was a man who appeared to be in his mid-fifties. Noting his polished wingtips, sharply creased trousers, navy blazer, crisp white shirt, and perfectly knotted tie, I wished I’d dusted the sand off my shoes.

We stood face to face. Actually, it was more like face to chest. I was only five feet tall and this man towered over me by at least a foot and a half.

“Commander Conrad West,” he said, extending his arm. His handshake was firm and strong. “You must be Kristy Farrell, the reporter from Animal Advocate Magazine.”

Conrad West stood ramrod straight, probably a throw-back from his military training. A former naval commander—the youngest African American to be appointed a commander in the navy’s history—he had started his career as a medical corpsman. He had been director of the Clam Shell Cove Aquarium since his retirement from the navy last year.

He walked behind his desk and positioned himself in a large swivel chair.

“You may sit,” he said, pointing to a straight back chair facing him.

I slid into the chair, suppressing the urge to playfully salute.

He went straight to the point. “I understand you’re writing about the land acquisition. Have you seen our expansion plans?”

“Yes, and they are impressive. But how will the aquarium come up with the money to buy this land?” I asked, fumbling through my bag for my pad and pen. “You’re competing with the bottomless pockets of Lucien Moray.”

Commander West leaned forward, his hands clasped in front, as if praying that what he was about to say would come true. “The current property owner, Stuart Holland, is a business man who’s not about to forgo a profit. But he’s also an active conservationist and a lifelong resident of this area who would like to see the land used in an environmentally friendly manner. He’s kept it vacant until recent financial loses forced him to put it up for sale.”

The Commander leaned back. “There’ll be no bidding war. He set a price—ten million dollars. The land is worth more, but Stuart wants it to go to us, so he set a price he feels we can reach. If we can raise the money by next summer, the land is ours.”

“Ten million is a high goal.”

He nodded. “More than half of the funding will come from a trust set up by Alicia Wilcox Chandler. We also have one million in reserve that we accumulated during the past few years. Of course, we’re still three million short, but our new development officer is planning an aggressive fundraising campaign with—”

A loud knock on the door interrupted the conversation.

Commander West scowled. “Enter.”

A plump woman with a bad case of acne barged into the room. She wore jeans and a light blue shirt with an aquarium patch on the upper left pocket identifying her as Madge.

“Commander,” she said, slightly out of breath. “We have a problem. The sea lion show is in ten minutes, and Katie just ran out.”

“What do you mean she ran out?”

The woman shrugged. “She took a call on her cell phone, then flew out of the amphitheater.

“Didn’t she say anything?” The scowl hadn’t left his face.

The woman paused, furrowing her eyebrows as if deep in thought. “Oh, yeah. But I don’t know if it had to do with why she left.”

“What did she say?” He appeared to be talking through gritted teeth.

“She said two fishermen found a body floating in the inlet.”

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About the Author

A mystery fan since she read her first Nancy Drew, Lois Schmitt combined a love of mysteries with a love of animals in her series featuring wildlife reporter Kristy Farrell. She is a member of several wildlife and humane organizations as well as Mystery Writers of America. Lois worked for many years as a freelance writer and is the author of Smart Spending, a consumer education book for young people. She previously worked as media spokesperson for a local consumer affairs agency and currently teaches at Nassau Community College on Long Island. Lois lives in Massapequa with her family which includes a 120 pound Bernese Mountain Dog. This dog bears a striking resemblance to Archie, a dog of many breeds who looks like a small bear, featured in her Kristy Farrell Mystery Series. Lois was 2nd runner up for the Killer Nashville Claymore Award for Something Fishy.

Catch Up With Our Author:

LoisSchmitt.com // Goodreads // Twitter // Facebook // Instagram

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Follow the tour here.

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Giveaway

This is a rafflecopter giveaway hosted by Partners in Crime
Virtual Book Tours for Lois Schmitt. There will be TWO winners.
TWO (2) winners will each receive (1) Amazon.com Gift Card
of varying amounts. The giveaway begins on June 1, 2021
and ends on July 1, 2021. Void where prohibited.

Enter here.

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Ripped from the Headlines, 19th Century—and a Giveaway! @JMmystery

Jeanne Matthews is happy to announce the arrival of a new historical mystery, Devil by the Tail, scheduled for release in July 2021.  Jeanne has a yen for travel and a passion for mythology, which she works into her novels whenever she can.  Originally from Georgia, Jeanne lives in Washington State with her husband, a law professor, and a Norwich terrier named Jack Reacher.  Information about her books, including the Dinah Pelerin international series, can be found on her website. http://www.jeannematthews.com  

Crime was an important theme in newspapers of the 19th Century and a major source of profit, especially accounts of sensational murders.  The more lurid the headlines, the more papers were sold.  The murder of beautiful and virtuous young ladies proved enormously popular, the gorier the better.  The love-gone-wrong angle added still more sizzle – infidelity, jealousy, insanity.  Readers gobbled it up and demanded more.  Written in a florid, exaggerated style, these reports sought to involve the emotions and play upon a sense of outrage.  “Next to the feeling that must arise from the contemplation of so foul a crime, we give ourselves to sadness that this unfortunate innocent should be murdered in the most shocking manner.”  But even more titillating than the death of an innocent, the murder of an infamous “nymph of the night” transfixed the public and boosted newspaper sales through the roof.

The murder of the prostitute Helen Jewett in 1836 changed journalism forever and coverage of the killer’s trial created a frenzy of competition among the penny press.  Which paper had scored an interview with the accused’s alibi witness?  Which had acquired statements from the prosecution’s lineup of witnesses, most of whom worked in the same brothel as the victim?  The public’s insatiable appetite for news created the inspiration – and the template – for the modern-day tabloid.  When Helen’s murderer was acquitted, a fresh cycle of shock and sensation erupted.

Of course murder wasn’t the only thing that grabbed readers’ interest.  One of the biggest stories reported from old Chicago was the affaire d’amour between “Gentle” Annie Stafford, the city’s most flamboyant brothel keeper and Cap Hymen, who ran its most notorious gambling den.  Annie had a savage temper, a misty-eyed fondness for the poetry of Lord Byron, and a serious crush on Cap.  We can’t know how he fell short of her romantic expectations, but on September 23, 1866, she armed herself with a rawhide whip and stormed into his card house.  The crowd cleared out as she knocked Cap downstairs, dragged him into the street, and chased him for several blocks, cracking her whip and expressing her disappointment in colorful language.  A few weeks later they married.  The wedding, attended by everyone who was anyone in the world of prostitution and gambling, was lavishly covered in the press.  The papers described all the juicy details of the event while deploring the couple’s unholy doings in their “shadowy haunts of vice.”

Before writing Devil By The Tail, I read a good many newspaper articles from the 1800s.  One item about a man who choked his wife to death impressed me so much I used it to kick off the novel.  “The orgy of crime continues and this reporter’s pen must hasten to keep pace with the bloody track of the monster.”  The literary flourishes, the hyperbole, the speculations and moralistic riffs fascinated me.  I studied journalism in college and once entertained ambitions of becoming a star reporter.  That didn’t happen, but I liked the idea of introducing a reporter into my new novel.  I invented a scandal-mongering news hound, a character prone to embellishments and distortions, someone whose business it is to stir public sentiment regardless of the havoc he might cause.  A bride slain by a jealous rival is grist for his mill.  As my two detectives, Garnick and Paschal, conduct their investigation, this muckraker complicates their efforts at every turn – not only poisoning public opinion against their client, but delving into the private lives of the detectives, as well.

There’s a wonderful quote in an 1866 detective novel, The Dead Letter by Metta Fuller Victor, and I couldn’t resist including it as the epigraph for Devil By The Tail.  “The morning papers had heralded the melancholy and mysterious murder through the city…thousands of persons had already marveled over the boldness and success, the silence and suddenness with which the deed was done, leaving not a clue by which to trace the perpetrator.  The public mind was busy with conjecture as to the motive for the crime – and it is not in the nature of a daily paper to neglect such opportunities for turning an honest penny.”

There has always been a morbid fascination with murder – a hunger for the heinous.  If it bleeds, it leads and sex sells.  This was as true in the 19th Century as it is today.  But the breathless, histrionic style of those early accounts “ripped from the headlines” makes murder sound simultaneously more horrible and more riveting.

Giveaway

Two unedited author review copies of Devil by the Tail are available for give away to readers who comment on this post; the winning names will be drawn on the evening of Monday, June 28th.  And if you don’t win the drawing, the book remains available for pre-order from the publisher at a 30% discount until its release in mid-July.  https://www.dxvaros.com/Devil-by-the-Tail-presales.

Book Review: Maxed Out by C.S. McDonald @CSMcDonald7 @iReadBookTours

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Title: Maxed Out
Series: The Owl’s Nest Mysteries #2
Author: C.S. McDonald
Publication Date: May 2, 2021
Genres: Mystery, Cozy

Purchase Links:
Barnes & Noble // Amazon

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Maxed Out
The Owl’s Nest Mysteries #2
C.S. McDonald
McWriter Books, May 2021
ISBN 979-8745992988
Trade Paperback

From the author—

The Owl’s Nest Couturier Shoppe is a huge success! Business is booming and Alexa Owl’s love life is heating up. Yet much to the seamstress’s dismay, Detective Bobby Starr is suddenly back again! Bobby isn’t your everyday gumshoe. Rather, he’s an angel who’s trying to earn a place in Saint Peter’s Guardian Angel Squad. He’s required to solve murders he had left unsettled from when he walked the earth in order to be accepted into this prestigious group. Of course, they will need to return to the time period in which the murder took place, and again, Alexa is a reluctant time traveler. Oh, and there’s one more little problem—this time, Bobby’s brought along a friend, Maxi Krogen, and she’s no angel!

Bobby Starr was a good enough detective during his time as a living, breathing human back in the 1950’s but he’s an angel now and really wants to become a member of the elite Guardian Angel Squad. To do so, he has to solve three of his old cold cases assigned to him by St. Peter. Maxed Out is the tale of the second case and, once again, he’s recruited shopowner Alexa Owl to help.

When Bobby shows up in Alexa’s life again, he’s not alone; tagging along is Maxi Krogen who spent years in prison for murdering her husband but she’s not exactly angelic, at least not in the pleasant way you might expect. No, Maxi is rude, cranky, secretive and anything but a cooperative ghost.

Modern day Pittsburgh gives way to the city of the 1950’s as the trio goes back in time to look for clues. Before long, they find themselves running into the mob and an apparent takeover of a popular pizza parlor but will they be able to ferret out the real killer?

This is a fun story and the reader who wholeheartedly throws out any sense of disbelief will have a thoroughly good time with these appealing characters and an intriguing puzzle. Note to self: go read the first book PDQ 😀

Reviewed by Lelia Taylor, June 2021.

About the Author

For twenty-six years C.S. McDonald’s life whirled around a song and a dance. Classically trained at Pittsburgh Ballet Theater School, The Pittsburgh Dance Alloy, and many others, she became a professional dancer and choreographer. In 2011 she retired from her dance career to write. Under her real name, Cindy McDonald, she writes murder-suspense and romantic suspense novels. In 2014 she added the pen name, C.S. McDonald, to write children’s books for her grandchildren. In 2016 she added the Fiona Quinn Mysteries. Presently, the Fiona Quinn Mysteries has nine books.

Cindy’s newest venture is The Owl’s Nest Mysteries. Once again, she has set her cozy mystery in Pittsburgh. The Owl’s Next Mysteries has a little grit, a little time travel, a little romance, and a whole lot of cozy!

Cindy resides on her Thoroughbred farm known as Fly by Night Stables near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with her husband, Bill, and her poorly behaved Cocker Spaniel, Allister.

Connect with the author:  Website  ~  Twitter  ~  Facebook

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Follow the tour here.

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Giveaway

Autographed copy of MAXED OUT, plus
other gifts (USA only) (ends Jul 23)

Enter here.

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Waiting On Wednesday (160) @ChetTheDog @ForgeReads

Waiting On Wednesday is a weekly event that
spotlights upcoming releases that I’m really
looking forward to. Waiting On Wednesday
is the creation of Jill at Breaking the Spine.
This week’s “can’t-wait-to-read” selection is:

Tender Is the Bite
A Chet & Bernie Mystery #11
Spencer Quinn
Forge Books, July 2021
Mystery, Private Investigators

From the publisher—

Chet and Bernie are contacted by a terribly scared young woman who seems to want their help. Before she can even tell them her name, she flees in panic. But in that brief meeting Chet sniffs out an important secret about her, a secret at the heart of the mystery he and Bernie set out to solve.

It’s a case with no client and no crime and yet great danger, with the duo facing a powerful politician who has a lot to lose. Their only hope lies with a ferret named Griffie who adores Bernie. Is there room for a ferret in the Chet and Bernie relationship? That’s the challenge Chet faces, the biggest of his career. Hanging in the balance are the lives of two mistreated young women and the future of the whole state.

Why am I waiting so eagerly? To be honest, I can’t imagine NOT waiting eagerly. I know some readers shy away from animal sleuths but nobody does it better than Mr. Quinn and having Chet tell these tales from his point of view never gets old. This private eye duo is good at what they do even if Chet is sometimes thrown off track by random squirrels and other distractions and they’re just plain fun to spend time with. This time, the fate of their corner of the universe seems to be in peril and I so want to know what’s going to happen with Griffie 😃.