Review A Dozen Deadly Rose

Review A Dozen Deadly Roses by Kathy Bennett

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This novel is Ms Bennett's first published. And it's a good beginning. A Dozen Deadly Roses is a romantic suspense. LAPD officer Jade Donovan is a field training officer. But when she finds out who the ‘rookie' riding with her will be, she knows she's in trouble. Mac Stryker was her training officer. He was also a drunk who nearly got them both killed. A mistake lands Jade in Mac's bed. She is left pregnant and Mac leaves the force, never knowing he had a son.

Now he's back and Jade just knows he's going to be trouble. She is torn between telling him about his son and maybe having to face his claims as a father. Stryker might be sober, but can he stay that way? Jade knows first hand how easy and often reformed drunks can fall back into the bottle.

As if that isn't enough, someone is stalking her. It starts with a gold box being delivered, filled with a dozen dead roses. The next day the same shows up on her doorstep, this time with eleven dead roses. It quickly becomes clear the threat is bad. Jade doesn't want her division to know what's going on. She'll tackle it herself. Her determination starts a train of events that will see her facing a killer and maybe losing everything--her life, her son's and Stryker's love.

I really enjoyed this book. I'm glad to hear the author plans more. Her characters are well developed and likable--or unlikeable as the case may be--and I know I was rooting for Jade and Stryker. If you like cops, suspense and romance, then this is the book for you. You won't be disappointed.

HUNTING SEASON by J.E. Taylor

Now available.


When Kyle Winslow escapes from custody and targets everyone Special Agent Steve Williams cares about, a turn of fate brings Steve face to face with Ty Aris – a criminal mastermind topping the FBI’s most wanted list. Torn between justice and vengeance, Steve must make a decision. Join alliances with Ty, or arrest him and lose his best chance to catch the bastard who destroyed his family.

A brief look into the mind of Special Agent Steve Williams...

The scene from the balcony reminded me of Charlie’s city view and I shudder, sinking into the chaise lounge and studying my new partner. He isn’t actually with the FBI.

Nope, he’s WANTED by the FBI.

Why haven’t I brought him in?

Good goddamn question.

I wonder why I haven’t either.

He’s as dangerous as they get. Even more so than The Slasher, but I need him. His technological genius leaves anything we have at the FBI in the dust, never mind the other talents he brings to the table. You see, he’s the best chance I have of hunting down the bastard that targeted my family.

“What are you looking at?” Chris Ryan asks, turning his steel blue gaze from the city to me.

His sharp-eyed glare catches me by surprise. He was reading my mind again - my contemplations of putting him behind bars when this was all over. Yes, one of his many talents includes reading minds.

Imagine a killer endowed with extra-sensory gifts like mind reading and the ability to control matter and you’ve got Chris Ryan – a.k.a. Ty Aris - a criminal mastermind that reinvented himself and snowed the authorities and inherited billions.

Every fiber of my being wants to lock him up. Except I can’t do that. You see, I made a promise to a dying man and now I’m stuck. Stuck between doing what I know is right and that stupid promise.

“Why did you do it?” I had to ask.

He sighs and takes the chair next to me, his lips pressing together in contemplation as he surveys the city skyline. “I’d like to say I was forced into it, but we both know that’s a lie.”

“An honest criminal. How refreshing.” The sarcasm in my voice palatable.

“Smart ass.” A hint of a smirk appears along with a condescending roll of his eyes.
At least he didn’t drop a litany of excuses. I had to give him that but it still didn’t erase my need to put him in jail.

“I’m not going to jail,” he says and retreats back into the apartment.
The shit thing is - even if I wanted to arrest him, I’m not sure I can.

For more information about J.E. Taylor, please visit her at her website or her blog.

Hunting Season is the follow up to Vengeance – which is on sale for $0.99 for the month of May:

After an undercover bust goes to hell, Special Agent Steve Williams becomes the target of an assassin and his wife’s visions escalate, forecasting a brutal assault on their family. Escaping from the city and armed with scant details from Jennifer’s dreams, Steve trudges through a litany of past connections, searching for the key to stop the course of fate. A brother with a grudge, a serial killer and a mafia assassin are all on his trail and the hunt begins . . .


My Bio:
J.E. Taylor is a writer, an editor, a manuscript formatter, a mother, a wife and a business analyst, not necessarily in that order. She first sat down to seriously write in February of 2007 after her daughter asked:

“Mom, if you could do anything, what would you do?”


From that moment on, she hasn’t looked back and now her writing resume includes six+ published novels along with several short stories on the virtual shelves including a few within eXcessica anthologies.

Ms. Taylor also moonlights as an Assistant Editor of Allegory, an online venue for Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror, and lends a hand in formatting manuscripts for eXcessica as well as offering her services judging writing contests for various RWA chapters.

She lives in Connecticut with her husband and two children and during the summer months enjoys her weekends on the shore in southern Maine.

Archaeology and Murder,

Meet author Sarah Wisseman

Archaeological sites are composed of layers, just like geological strata. In the Middle East, where I worked on my first excavation, people chose the same sites over and over again to build on for two reasons—the availability of water, and defensibility. Thus, walled cities with protected cisterns inside rose on the same “tells” over and over again.

Unlike the layer-cake they are so often compared too, archaeological layers are messy. Instead of being neat, horizontal layers that are easy to interpret, they are disturbed by running water, animal burrowing, tree roots growing, and humans digging garbage pits and foundation trenches.

Mysteries are composed of layers, too. The top layer, or stratum, is what the reader sees and where the main story takes place. A couple of strata down is where the villain hangs out, plotting and planning away, occasionally rising to the surface like a misplaced artifact in an ancient garbage pit.

Personalities are layered as well, and it's the job of writers to reveal the layers in their characters in ways that move the story along. And everyone has a garbage pit--the family traumas from the past, the dysfunctional relationships of the present. Garbage, like compost, can provide rich beginnings for new stories.

Gradually I'm excavating my own life to unearth situations and characters that will make good mysteries. These include creepy old attic museums, digs in Israel, Italy, and Nevada, and peculiar academic characters that morph into murderers (or murderees!).

My latest book, The House of the Sphinx, has at least three layers. Lisa Donahue, archaeologist and museum curator, finally gets to visit Egypt with her physician husband, James. Their standard tour of Egypt, complete with a four-night cruise on the Nile, is the top layer. Underneath is a terrorist plot to infect Western tourists with smallpox at major archaeological sites. And below that is the complicated layer of interactions within the Arab family that aids the terrorists.

I love reading layered mysteries, especially historicals. A recent discovery is Medicus, by Ruth Downie. It’s about an irascible but loveable Roman physician working in Britannia and his slave/housekeeper Tilla who won’t obey orders. A fabulous read!


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DOING RESEARCH FOR MY DEPUTY TEMPE CRABTREE MYSTERIES

The Deputy Tempe Crabtree series is set in modern times in a small mountain community in the Southern Sierra. Though the community of Bear Creek is similar to the town I live in, I moved the location 1000 feet higher into the mountains. The Bear Creek Indian Reservation in the books is similar to the Tule River Indian Reservation, also nearby. Tempe is a quarter Native American and she is often called upon to help out with crimes that occur on the reservation or involve Indians.

When I first began about Tempe, I really didn’t know it was going to be a series. The first book I wrote—though not the first published—Deadly Trail is about the murder of the owner of a local Inn. One of the suspects is Nick Two John who has made a garden behind the Inn with native plants. In this book, Nick introduces Tempe to much of her Indian heritage. The Inn is similar to one in our little town. Much of the information about native plants came from an Indian couple who have a similar garden.

In the second book, Deadly Omen, a princess candidate is murdered at a Pow Wow while Tempe is working there. I got the idea for this book while attending a Pow Wow and helping the invited photographer by getting permissions and names of people she took pictures of. During the Pow Wow, I took many notes. When this book came out, one of the local Indians called to tell me that I’d gotten everything right.

Number three is Unequally Yoked (only available as an e-book) and is about a child’s disappearance. Tempe participates in mourning ceremonial and her eyes are opened to who is responsible. I learned about the ceremony in a book about the Tule River Indians written by Frank Latta.

Intervention is set in a mountain lodge during a blizzard where Tempe and her husband have gone for a romantic weekend. The other guests include several people from the movie industry and one disappears. Tempe is guided by the spirit of a Great Blue Heron—or perhaps, an angel. There is a mountain lodge near where I live and I borrowed a lot of its history for this book. (Again, much of what I used came for an interview I did for the newspaper about this particular lodge.)

In Wingbeat, an owl flies down in front of Tempe, a warning of danger ahead. While investigating the death of a long missing granddaughter she encounters a hidden marijuana farm. The location for the pot farm is a place way up in the mountains where I once interviewed someone for a newspaper article. The home was self-sufficient and so difficult to find, I thought at the time it was the perfect place for something illegal.

Due to the death of my publisher, I had to find another publishing company. The next in the series is Calling the Dead. Tempe calls back the dead to find out the truth about a suicide. I learned about this through a book about Indian ceremonies and it fit right into what I was writing.

Next came Judgment Fire. In this one, while investigating the murder of a battered wife, Tempe learns why she didn’t embrace her Indian heritage. Under the guidance of a shaman, she does a star ceremony which opens her eyes to much of what is going on.

Kindred Spirits came about while I was visiting in Crescent City, California and met a Tolowa woman. We became instant friends and she told me all about the Tolowa people who were nearly wiped out when the white settlers came to the area. I knew I had to write a book with her in it. She had such a dynamic personality, she became two important characters. Tempe goes to Crescent City to learn more about a murder victim found after a wild fire in the mountains above Bear Creek. During her stay she learns about the Tolowa’s encounters with Big Foot.

While doing research about Big Foot on the Internet for the earlier book, I came across a webpage that tells about a creature called the Hairy Man who roams in the mountains near the Tule River Reservation. I was fortunate to go on a field trip with the local college’s anthropology class to a rock shelter with pictographs of the Hairy Man and his family. While there, I knew Tempe would have an encounter with the Hairy Man and Dispel the Mist is the book where it happens.

The latest, Invisible Path, also has its roots in my visit to the rock shelter. A short distance from there, at the end of the paved reservation road, there is rehabilitation center for Indians with drug and alcohol abuse problems. I decided the next book should have something to do with the rehab center and some of the young men on the reservation.

The book that will come out this fall is title Bears With Us and the ideas began when my police office grandson began telling about his encounters with bears while he was on the job. At the same time, we had a few bear visitations in our little town. I asked him lots and lots of questions and got plenty of great answers.

I am quick to let people know that I am writing fiction. Though I borrow a lot from the Tule River Reservation and the Indians who live there, the stories and the characters come from my imagination. Despite that, I often run into Indians who say, “Oh, you’re the woman who writes about us.”

Though I’m not a Native American myself, I have a great-granddaughter who is ¼ Tule River Indian and a daughter-in-law whose father is a full-blooded Yaqui. In fact, she looks a lot like I envision Tempe.

Sometimes I wonder if I’ll run out of ideas for this series, but so far that hasn’t been a problem.

Bio: 1Marilyn Meredith is the author of nearly thirty published novels, including the award winning Deputy Tempe Crabtree mystery series, the latest Invisible Path from Mundania Press. Native American Tempe is the resident deputy of the town of Bear Creek, which has a great resemblance to Springville. Invisible Path is the 9^th in this series and can be purchased in the usual places and is also available on Kindle. Writing as F. M. Meredith, her latest Rocky Bluff P.D. crime novel is Angel Lost, the third from Oak Tree Press.

Marilyn is a member of EPIC, Four chapters of Sisters in Crime, including the Internet chapter, Mystery Writers of America, and on the board of the Public Safety Writers of America. Visit her at http://fictionforyou.com and her blog at http://marilymeredith.blogspot.com