When Lydia Taylor’s husband dies in an automobile accident in Los Angeles, he leaves her so well off she becomes a target for scam artists who want her money and others who want her body. Lydia just wants to get on with her life and accepts an offer from close friends to stay at their villa in Carmel, but an international gang of art thieves has other plans for her until an old school chum, now a detective, steps in.
Excerpt
WHILE THE ANGELS SLEPT
Twilight had fallen over the Paris skyline. The last golden rays of sunlight dipped below the horizon, yielding their majesty to a dusty purple sky dotted here and there with the first spattering of early summer stars that spread slowly across the heavens.
This was not the best weather to be breaking into a museum in the middle of the night.
***
A loud screeching noise filled Lydia’s ears as the car hit the guardrail and her world rolled topsy-turvy around her as the Mercedes flipped over, spinning upside down in a clockwise pattern in the middle of the highway. Had it continued spinning, Josh and Lydia might have been safe inside the well-built compartment. Instead, the car behind them couldn’t stop in time and hit the rear bumper of their vehicle, causing it to skid sideways along the asphalt. Josh’s door ripped off its hinges and sparks flew all around them like a handful of giant sparklers at a Fourth of July picnic. The Mercedes stopped skidding and rotated in a slow spin that wound its way down to a halt.
***
Frank was twenty-eight, same as Josh had been. He was from Boroloola in the Northern Territory off the Gulf of Carpentaria, which is why he loved the ocean so much, he told her, it reminded him of home. He said he was an art major who had left home because his father persecuted him for not following in the family fishing business. He had promised himself he would strike it rich in California.
“So far, that hasn’t happened, I‘m afraid.” He laughed. “Fact is, I’ve just been booted out of my flat. I’m sleeping in my Volkswagon tonight.”
When high school principal Jerry Egge is brutally murdered, Deputy sheriff Dave Jenkins begins an eerie investigation. Just about everyone in Soldier, Minnesota, is a suspect.
"Murder isn't usually this funny."
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Forensic pathologist Greg Stevens MD is caught in the middle of a bitter struggle between two of his closest friends. Sean Merrick, an attorney specializing in malpractice law, sues Dr. Jason Costanza after Merrick's wife dies unexpectedly, following
