Reluctant Sleuth Mysteries
The amateur sleuth need not be bogged down in police procedural or legal jargon — he can be an everyman and live a life full of joys and contradictions, like the rest of us, but he gets into situations you and I wouldn't want to. Gary Kemmerman is middle-aged and vulnerable — he doesn't own a gun, he yearns for what most of us do, but he's dragged into events that put him and Becca in peril and change them.
Change — the evolution of Gary and Becca Kemmerman as individuals and as a couple — is central to the series. They change as we do, with resistance, compromise, and wonder. As quirky as some characters are, no one in the series is left unmarked by the pressures of life. And Becca, God bless her, is not willing to take a back seat.
In SAY GOODBYE (published by Deadly Ink Press, February 21, 2008), a second chance at love is the last thing on Gary Kemmerman's mind — he wears his wedding ring to preserve memories. We meet him the morning he's forced to become an amateur sleuth, when the widow of a friend asks for his help. The police say her husband's fatal car crash was an accident, but she knows its murder.
The sole witness to the crash is a divorcée who also wears a wedding ring, but for protection. Becca has stopped dating. Yet they're attracted to one another. As Gary digs into his friend's murder, he uncovers a multi-million dollar corporate scam protected by a killer who hums a Disney tune. Those who get in the way wind up underground behind an abandoned building in the New Jersey Meadowlands.
Falling for Becca lets Gary say goodbye to his late wife. When his police lieutenant friend brings Becca to him despite the danger, the couple discover the depth of their passion. But because of that, Gary is faced with a dilemma: will he risk his life for the woman he's come to love, or say goodbye again.
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In the second Reluctant Sleuth Mystery, PERFECT COVER (coming from Deadly Ink Press in December 2008), Gary and Becca are married. Someone is attacking women at night in the hospital where Becca serves as a nurse. Gary is asked to look into it — in exchange, his police lieutenant friend has Becca reassigned off the night shift. When she finds out, and he won't let her into what he's doing, she volunteers as a police decoy.
The title PERFECT COVER refers in part to the ex-NYPD detective who has come back to kill a young woman. She's a nursing student at the hospital. He's become the pizza deliveryman, preparing a basement killing room at the same time as he's falling for her. A hospital security director called the scenario one of his nightmares. Gary figures out enough of the goings-on to get himself injured and put Becca in mortal danger from a direction that blind-sides them.
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In the third Reluctant Sleuth Mystery, HIGHER CALLING, Gary witnesses an accident near his home, is slugged at the scene, and then he and Becca are shot at the next morning. He has no idea why, but the bullets almost hit her and he's angry enough to push himself into the middle of what he cannot know is a suicide bombing planned near the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree. Becca wants in, Gary makes her a partner and finds he can't keep up with her.
The title HIGHER CALLING refers in part to terrorist beliefs. A rogue Irish operative meets a quirky bar girl, both are damaged goods, neither dares use the word "love," but their bonding — well, I expected to kill her off but she woke me one night, the woman almost crying in my dream, telling me, "No, no, give me a little happiness, please, and here's how you do it." She was so right.
Gary, who only wants to protect Becca, faces an ultimate dilemma, his own higher calling. If he's to disrupt the bombing, he must give up his wife.
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Gary and Becca are enjoying their first anniversary vacation, a small-ship cruise, when their cabin neighbors vanish. The captain says they went ashore, and warns Gary off. But Becca drags him into it. Investigating on and off the ship as it visits Caribbean islands, the couple finds a dangerous cast of passengers and officers hunting for a missing $86 million. Except after Becca's visit to a topless beach, one of them is chasing her. Can Gary and Becca survive attempts on their lives and work through unexpected marital problems? Can they kill to save one another? Who winds up in the DARK SEA?