“I don’t mean to be unkind, but I’ve known you a long time now. You have a habit for building narratives. Getting too wrapped up in wanting to fight dragons.” — Tibo
Ashley (Ash) McKenna has been fighting dragons of one kind or another his entire life. When readers first met the Staten Island born and bred McKenna in series debut New Yorked, he was a man who had allowed long-simmering anger to creep in on and rule his life, driving him to abuse both substances and those around him. After bringing his personal investigation into the murder of his longtime friend and unrequited love, Chell, to a violent conclusion, McKenna pulled up his stakes and headed for Oregon.
The time I tried to capture my thesis advisor, three people ended up dead and I spent a significant amount of time in my own trunk. — Dominick Prince
There’s the easy way to do things, and there’s the hard way to do things. And then there’s the Dominick Prince way to do things. If given the choice and easy’s not an option, take the hard way over the Prince way.
“What brought you here, sweetheart? How did your unfinished sentence end like this?” — Nan Vining
Lying Blind, the sixth entry in the Nan Vining series by Dianne Emley, opens with an absolutely stunning description. Pink rose petals blown by the Santa Ana wind drift lazily on the crystal clear water of an infinity pool behind a Spanish Colonial Revival mansion on a hilltop overlooking Pasadena and Los Angeles. Underneath an equally crisp, blue sky, the scene presents “the illusion of a waterfall flowing over the edge of the world.”
Of course, the dead body floating facedown in the pool does spoil the effect just a bit.
December 24th - Berkley
