Killer Deadline | Audiobook Tour

Synopsis

Folks in Pine Grove, Pennsylvania, claim that where Nikki Bryant goes, trouble is not far behind. Her refusal to back down from a challenge has made Nikki Bryant a top investigative journalist.

When an online friend nudges her to join him in a pact to reconnect with their first loves, Nikki and her boxer dog Elmo leave the bright lights of Las Vegas for the charming town of Pine Grove. There, she must face the biggest challenges in her career and life—the first love she had left behind and her father’s unsolved murder.

But before she has time to unpack her car, Nikki stumbles upon the dead body of local news anchor, Ashleigh Addison, her childhood rival. Could Ashleigh’s death be connected to an explosive news story that she had teased about airing live? Did that explosive story have anything to do with the murder of Nikki’s father?

With the clues in her father’s cold case hot again, Nikki intends to chase down the story of her life until she catches his killer—no matter what it takes.

Guest Post

Tackling the Cold Case Mystery

By Lauren Carr

Cold case mysteries are hot.

As a fan of mysteries, I have always been intrigued with the unsolved cold case. I still remember the chills that would go up and down my spine when I’d pick up a Nancy Drew or Hardy Boys book to discover that the plot revolved around an unsolved mystery from long ago. 

As an adult, I’d wait anxiously every week for Robert Stack to pull me in for an hour of Unsolved Mysteries. Now, I’m able to satisfy my cravings with other cold case enthusiasts via the internet which offers a ton of websites and blogs where amateur and even some professional detectives offer tips and theories in hopes of thawing out cases that have turned to ice.

So it should not be any surprise that I would tackle cold cases in my murder mysteries. The first installment in the Nikki Bryant Cozy Mystery finds out protagonist, an investigative journalist, returning to her small home town to run her family’s television station. 

But before she has time to unpack her car, Nikki stumbles upon the dead body of local news anchor, Ashleigh Addison, her childhood rival. Could Ashleigh’s death be connected to an explosive news story that she had teased about airing live? Did that explosive story have anything to do with the murder of Nikki’s father?

With the clues in her father’s cold case hot again, Nikki intends to chase down the story of her life until she catches his killer—no matter what it takes. 

Killer Deadline is not my first novel that has revolved around a cold case mystery. My first novel, A Small Case of Murder dove into a series of cold cases dating back over fifty years. A Fine Year for Murder takes the Thorny Rose detectives to the Virginia wine country to investigate the brutal murder of a family from Jessica Faraday’s childhood. The Chris Matheson Cold Case Mysteries features a group of  law enforcement retirees called The Geezer Squad who devote their time to solving cold cases.

While the excitement of solving a cold case mystery makes for thrilling plotlines, they do present their own unique challenges.

For one thing, the writer penning the cold case has to ask the all-important question, “What makes a cold case, especially a decades old cold case, turn hot?”

In recent years, science has played a major role in solving cold cases. Police departments across the globe have been dusting off cold cases and sending evidence to labs in hopes that advances in forensics since the crime had been committed will provide that break through needed to identify the killer.

That’s an ideal situation in real life, but not necessarily a page turning plotline for a fictional mystery. Luckily, life and time offer many other scenarios that can—and have―heated up cold cases.

Death Bed Confession: Still, this can be too easy—or maybe not. In one case I researched, an elderly woman confessed to her daughter that her son had killed a young woman decades before. In this true case, the daughter was not surprised. She had often suspected that her brother had killed the woman. The problem was that her brother had an airtight alibi. In spite of the mother’s deathbed confession, the police couldn’t arrest her son, who had gone on to establish a highly respected life since the murder. First, they had to reopen the fifty-year-old case, break the suspect’s alibi, and find proof that he had committed the murder.

Changed Circumstances/Relationships: One cold case murder that I had researched was blown wide open when the prime suspect landed in jail for an unrelated crime. As is so often the case, the police in the small town were certain about who had murdered the victim, a witness in a burglary case. The defendant he was testifying against had an airtight alibi, but not the defendant’s brother, who had a long violent history. Unfortunately, everyone in the small town was terrified of the suspect. The police believed many people had knowledge of the murder but were too scared to come forward. After all, the murderer had already killed one witness. Many years after the murder, the prime suspect was arrested for an unrelated crime. With him locked up, suddenly witnesses poured out of the woodwork—including the brother who the victim was going to testify against.

Long Lost Evidence Discovered: In May 2016, the Plumas County Sheriff in California announced the discovery of a hammer that they believed to be the murder weapon in the thirty-five year old murder of Glenna Sue Sharp, her son and a friend of his. Her missing daughter’s remains were discovered three years later. The hammer was discovered over three decades later a stone’s throw from the cabin where the two prime murder suspects resided. Unfortunately, both suspects died before enough evidence was collected to bring them to justice. This tragic murder case became known as the Keddie Murder Mystery. The discovery of the hammer, resting not far from the crime scene, inspired my second Thorny Rose Mystery, A Fine Year for Murder. 

That is often how it happens. 

Days turn into weeks, which turn into months, which turn into years, which turn into decades. Suddenly, something somewhere happens—when you least expect it. That unexpected event acts like a flame to make that cold case hot again.

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