Embedded Files
Detective Heath Barrington Mysteries
Death Comes Darkly (Book 1)
Can a detective and a policeman find love amidst murder? Heath Barrington is an attractive, clever, big city detective, confident, strong, and crazy about police officer Alan Keyes. Down-to-earth, noble, and naïve, Alan struggles with his desires for Heath versus 1940s America and his guilty conscience.
Heath’s skills of deduction and reasoning are put to the test as he and Alan work together to solve the murder of an eccentric millionaire in his mysterious, isolated estate. They search for clues and uncover long buried secrets of the weekend guests while keeping secrets of their own.
It’s up to Heath to solve the mystery and convince Alan that some secrets aren’t worth keeping, and lust can lead to love.
Death Goes Overboard (Book 2)
Gregor Slavinsky went overboard. Or did he? He was murdered. Or was he? It’s up to Detective Heath Barrington and his partner, police officer Alan Keyes, to find out as they search for clues and a missing twenty-five thousand dollars aboard an old lake steamer and throughout 1947 Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
They are up against gangsters, con artists, and a very seductive Grant Riker, a fellow policeman who could come between Heath and Alan, upsetting their romance.
The three of them race the clock to find the truth amidst lies, secrets, and possible scandal, while riding the waves of a potential love triangle.
Death Check In (Book 3)
All Detective Heath Barrington and his partner, Alan Keyes, want is to get away for a weekend of romance, but they find murder instead when a missing tie leads them to the body of the peculiar Victor Blount, and Heath can't resist the urge to investigate. Who killed Blount, and why?
Clues turn up around every corner, but what do they mean? The bloody "W," the green spool of thread grasped in the dead man’s hand, the newspaper left at the doorstep: they all lead down a strange and winding road of mystery and danger. As Heath and Alan work together to solve the case, they encounter various and eccentric suspects, old friends, and a hostile Chicago Detective, Marty Wilchinski, who doesn’t like Milwaukee police involved in a Chicago crime. Forced to act on their own, out of their jurisdiction, they race against time to find the killer before Wilchinski files the case closed.
Death Takes a Bow (Book 4)
Alan Keyes takes a break from his police duties to itch his acting bug in a local stage production. But he soon learns the theater has a deadly past and ghostly forebodings, including a telegram that seems to have come from the beyond. Who’s really behind the telegram? That’s just one of the puzzles that must be solved after the leading man is murdered during the opening night performance, and Detective Heath Barrington is thrust into the limelight to find the killer.
Among the large cast of suspects is Oliver Crane, the director whose finances depend on the success of this play, Jazz Monroe, Milwaukee’s sweetheart with a secret, and the handsome actor Henry Hawthorne, who has designs on Alan. When Alan seems to return Henry’s attentions, Heath must put his jealousy and insecurities aside to determine what’s real, what’s illusion, who’s acting and who’s telling the truth, before Death Takes a Bow.
Death Overdue (Book 5)
I know what you are. Five words scrawled on a note, and Heath knew his life was now in jeopardy. He had no choice but to confront the blackmailer and find out what proof he had. But what then? Pay up and risk demands for future payments? Or not give in and throw his life away?
The decision’s made for him when the blackmailer turns up dead. Is Heath a murderer? Even he isn’t sure, thanks to several double martinis. Other suspects include a voluptuous neighbor, a smarmy grocer, a ruthless gangster, Heath’s cousin Liz, who was once married to the blackmailer, and Miss Caldwell, a wily librarian who has eyes for the blackmailer’s current wife, Alice. Heath tries to read between the lines to solve the case of a death overdue before he’s arrested for the crime.
Death's Prelude (Book 6 - A Prequel)
It’s 1937, and Heath Barrington is a naïve twenty-two-year-old about to set sail across the Atlantic on the Queen Mary. While on board, he meets the handsome Lord Simon Quimby, who invites Heath to his estate. Heath falls for Simon hard, but Simon soon becomes withdrawn and distant. Is Simon all he appears to be, or is there more to him than meets the eye? And what of the old gypsy curse Simon claims his family is under? Did it really cause his mother’s death, his sister’s suicide, and his father’s murder, or did Simon have something to do with it all? It’s up to Heath to uncover the truth, despite his heart telling him otherwise.
In this prequel to the Detective Heath Barrington Mystery series, Heath discovers that first love changes you forever and drives you to become the person you’re destined to be.
Death Foretold (Book 7)
A traveling spiritualist is found shot to death in an alley late at night with his underwear around his ankles. But the perpetrator is an enigma. Was it the young trick with a drug problem the spiritualist met in the alley? The unusual woman who runs the boarding house where the trick lives? The dead man’s wife, another spiritualist with secrets of her own? The handsome, alcoholic protégé? The beautiful woman who leads the spiritualist’s fan club? Or someone else altogether?
With a list of suspects a mile long, only Detective Heath Barrington will be able to crack the murder. But Heath’s handsome fellow detective, Grant Riker, has an unlikely connection to their prime suspect that reveals a shady past he’s ashamed to admit. With more questions than answers, a séance may be the only way to the truth. Or perhaps the answer is in the cards? While Heath searches for the murderer, he uncovers more dark secrets than he bargained for, and witnesses firsthand the relentless pressure for LGBTQ+ people in the 1940s to stay hidden in the shadows.
Mason Adler Mysteries
Murder on Monte Vista (Book 1)
It’s 1946, and on a hot spring night in Phoenix, Arizona, things are only beginning to heat up at the Monte Vista Road home of flamboyant decorator Walter Waverly Wingate.
Private detective Mason T. Adler isn’t thrilled to be turning fifty, and the party Walter throws him makes him even more uncomfortable. Walter has arranged a special birthday present for Mason: a private hour with the handsome, young Henry Bowtrickle in Walter’s upstairs bedroom. But the night turns deadly when his birthday gift turns up murdered.
The room was locked, no way in or out, and only Henry and Mason were inside. Mason Adler is on the case, but he is also a suspect, along with the other assorted party guests who were all downstairs at the time of the stabbing. Or were they?
Murder at Union Station (Book 2)
Phoenix, May 6, 1946
At close to midnight in the Union Station baggage room, the air is hot, still, and thick. The eleven forty-five Golden State Limited to Los Angeles is approaching rapidly when the baggage handler, Alfred Brody, notices a stray hound dog sniffing around one of the steamer trunks. The horrific discovery of a body inside the trunk can mean only one thing: there’s a murderer among them.
The young woman was certainly murdered, but who did it, and why? Suspects and motives abound as Private Detective Mason Adler investigates. He soon realizes that nothing, and no one, are what they seem to be as he races to uncover the truth and bring the real murderer to justice without becoming the next victim.
Murder at the Oasis (Book 3)
A relaxing trip to a Palm Springs resort turns deadly for Mason Adler and his friend Walter Wingate when first one of their fellow guests, then another, ends up murdered. Suspects and motives abound among the remaining guests as well as the owner of the Oasis resort, Marvin Gagliardi, an old friend of Walter’s.
Mason investigates, hoping to prove Marvin’s innocence, but the more he uncovers, the more he wonders if Marvin actually might be the murderer. Distracting Mason is the handsome and eligible police detective assigned to the case, Brian Branchford. Mason had vowed not to become interested in anyone living a five-hour drive from Phoenix, but Branchford’s green eyes, gray hair, and toothbrush moustache are compelling reasons to give it a try.
It’s up to Mason to uncover the truth about the deaths at the Oasis, and to discover if there’s romance as well as murder at the Oasis.
Stand Alone Murder Mysteries
Puzzles Can Be Deadly
A bizarre old woman who worships the memory of her lost son.
A nun with hidden secrets.
A spinster housekeeper with a secret of her own.
An angry young man with a troubled past.
A neighbor who claims to talk to dead people at seances.
Skip Valentine and Henry Finch encounter these eccentric people on their weekend trip to visit Henry’s uncle. When they learn of the groundskeeper who died in a mysterious fire shortly before they arrived, strange occurrences are imbued with ominous portent. The peculiar accidents, ghostly barking, a pounding heard late at night in the creepy old mansion, and a strange old box buried behind the burned-out carriage house all add up to something.
Skip yearns to investigate. It’s all so perplexing. But when another death raises the stakes, the puzzle turns deadly. The solution may lie in a curious rhyme told by the groundskeeper before he died, but first Skip and Henry must decipher it.
Fatal Foul Play
When Milo agreed to accompany his friend Mark for a weekend getaway with six other men in northern Arizona, he did not anticipate a snowstorm stranding them all in their lodge. But they make the best of it. Their biggest concern is how they’re going to entertain themselves until the snowstorm ends.
Complicating things for Milo is his secret attraction to Mark, not to mention Mark’s renewed attraction to his handsome ex-boyfriend, Brick, who seems like he wants to rekindle the relationship.
But all is not as it seems in their cozy snow-covered lodge. When one of them is found brutally murdered, tension between the friends escalates. It seems that everyone has their secrets, and some of those secrets are proving deadly. Suspicion mounts as each person wonders who is behind the killing, and why.
With no way to contact the authorities, it’s up to Milo and Mark to discover which of their friends is the murderer and stop him before they become the next target.
A Marvelous Murder
Hollywood, 1939.
When film director Orland Orcott is found dead in his locked study, police rule it a suicide. However, movie star Victor Marvel believes otherwise and sets out to investigate, aided by his handsome boyfriend, Griffin, and Eve Spellman, Victor’s smart, young costar.
Suspects include Orland’s son, Tab, an aspiring actor who was blacklisted after his father found out that he’s gay, and Sheila, a former mistress of Orland’s, tossed aside when he took up with a new starlet. Added to the list are William Taylor, a has-been that Orland delighted in humiliating, William’s daughter Lydia, who may have slept with Orland to get her father a movie role. Agatha Mudd, a gossip columnist with a secret past is also a suspect, and Orland’s long-suffering wife, Marjorie.
Was it suicide or murder? The trio is on the case to find the truth, but suspects and grudges abound. With so many motives for murder, finding the killer won’t be easy. But no one else cares as long as Orland Orcott is dead.
Google Sites
Report abuse