Landry Matthews writes murder mysteries and projects that confidence outward like a force. She’s magnetic. Her relationships ignite and burn out fast—that’s the pattern she’s built, the one she understands. She moves through rooms like someone accustomed to being watched.
Detective Ellery Quinn is structured differently. Methodical. Serious. Currently demoted to conference security after pushing back on her captain one too many times. It’s punishment dressed as assignment. She’s supposed to blend into the background and keep things orderly.
The Southwest Desert Literary Conference in Flagstaff is supposed to be routine. Then an attendee dies. A real homicide, not a fictional one, which means Quinn’s actually working a case. Landry, with her professional knowledge of how murders function in narrative, becomes unexpectedly useful. She understands the mechanics—motive, opportunity, the narrative shape crimes take.
The problem is attraction. It complicates investigation in the way attraction always does. Quinn needs Landry as a resource but can’t stop seeing her as a person she wants. The line between professional and personal blurs constantly. Landry notices. Landry uses it.
Garrett and James keep the tone light without letting the mystery dissolve into romance. The case matters. The attraction matters. Neither one cancels the other out. The conference setting creates a contained space—a closed circle of suspects and witnesses and people with reasons to lie. It suits the genre structure perfectly. Nowhere to escape to. Nowhere to hide what’s happening between them or inside the investigation.
Details
| ISBN: 9781939062567 |
| Subtitle: |
| Genre: Mystery |
| Subject(s): Fiction |
| Publication Date: 2014-07-01 |
| Original Publication Date: |
| Publisher: Sapphire Books Publishing |
| Language: English |
| Format: Paperback |
| Pages: 154 |
| Rating: |
| Notes: |
| Book_ID: 106131 |