After her father was shot and killed when she was 14 years old, Jessie Madison was forced to step in for her alcoholic mother and raise her troubled younger sister Kayla. It also cemented Jessie’s decision to become an FBI agent in order to solve her father’s murder, but she’s forced to abandon her training when Kayla’s drug addiction forces Jessie to quit.
Well, not exactly a new me, but a new voice for my fiction. My published books have always been in the voice of the experienced, logical small-town chief of police Samuel Craddock. Having grown up with a grandfather and father who were storytellers, I always had the voice of a man in my head. It seemed natural to write in the voice of a man. An older man loosely based on my grandfather.
Jenna slid her shapely legs out of the Mercedes, admiring how elegant they looked in the five-inch Jimmy Choos. Her newly sleek body followed in an effortless, graceful movement. She smoothed the creamy silk, size-six skirt, not because there was a wrinkle in it, but to remind herself how it felt to be slender again. Forty pounds, lost in the course of a year, to gain her darling little figure back. To remind herself of what her husband had once adored.
Reading about Jarrett Creek, Texas always feels like returning home. The community is spread out over long distances but sparsely populated, and so residents tend to know everyone else—and their business. Samuel Craddock is their retired former police chief, recently brought back after a scheme forced Jarrett Creek into bankruptcy. No one is more surprised than Craddock to discover how well it's working out.
Mira looked terrible in black. It made her complexion appear washed out and depleted, which was appropriate, under the circumstances.
She glanced at the diamond watch Bob had bestowed on her two years ago for their thirtieth wedding anniversary. 9:20. Sharon would be picking her up in twenty minutes. Maybe she should wear her old watch. Unclipping the elegant diamond one, she laid it in her jewelry case and rummaged around in the drawer until she found her old Timex. Of course, the battery had run down a long time back, but there was no reason anyone should notice.
After the death of his beloved wife, Samuel Craddock may have expected his retirement as police chief of Jarrett Creek, Texas would be days spent enjoying his art collection, sitting on his porch, and avoiding the predatory widows delivering casseroles to his door. When one of the widows, Loretta Singletary, brings news that Dora Lee Parjeter has been murdered in her own home and Sheriff Rodell has zeroed in on her grandson Greg Marcus as the killer, Craddock can’t sit idly by.
