I’m a fan of Jean Rabe and her Piper Blackwell books, and she’s released a new one!
Sheriff Piper Blackwell is plunged into the dark heart of “idyllic” Spencer County, Indiana…
A teenager dressed as Tinker Bell never made it to the Halloween party. Her murders sends a ripple of fear through Piper Blackwell’s rural jurisdiction. Investigating the crime, the young sheriff and her detective are drawn into an underworld they didn’t know existed. Can the pair survive the trip into the dark heart of once idyllic Spencer County? Can they find the killer before more lives are are destroyed and he strikes again?
The Dead of Autumn on Amazon: mybook.to/DeadofAutmn Dead of Winter on Amazon: mybook.to/DeadofWinterAudio The Piper Blackwell Series on Amazon: http://mybook.to/PiperBlackwellSeries
About the Author: USA Today best-seller, Jean Rabe’s impressive writing career spans decades, starting as a newspaper reporter and bureau chief. From there she went on to become the director of RPGA, a co-editor with Martin H. Greenberg for DAW books, and, most notably, Rabe is an award-winning author of more than forty science fiction/fantasy and murder mystery thrillers. She writes mysteries and fantasies, because life is too short to be limited to one genre–and she does it with dogs tangled at her feet, because life is too short not to be covered in fur. Find out more about her at www.jeanrabe.com
Excerpt: 5:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct 31st
Teal organza wings embellished with silvery clock gears shimmered strangely beautiful in the setting sun. They were attached to the shoulders of a woman lying face-down in a ditch, a quarrel protruding from her neck, the blood that had streamed from the wound still wet. Another quarrel was lodged in the middle of her back. Sheriff Piper Blackwell guessed the woman was roughly her height, a little over five feet.
The breeze gusted, ruffling the wings just enough that Piper could see the deceased wore skimpy short-shorts covered in green sequins matching the lone sequined tennis shoe on her right foot. The left foot was bare and tangled in coarse fescue.
A Halloween costume, obviously. Piper had spotted several children trick-or-treating on her drive here and had stopped to lecture a pint-sized Superman who’d darted in front of her Explorer.
The farmhouses on this county road sat a half-mile to a mile apart. The woman might have been going to one of them, attending a party perhaps; Piper would check on that in a little while. She wanted to ease the victim over, get a look at her face, find some identification, but she wouldn’t disturb the body until after the coroner arrived.
“Dr. Neufeld said she’d be about twenty minutes,” said Detective Basil Meredith. He had a deep, rich voice. At six-feet-tall with espresso brown skin, Basil didn’t go unnoticed in mostly white Spencer County. “Said she didn’t appreciate being pulled from her cocktail hour.”
Piper edged into the ditch and turned on her body cam. Basil did the same. He clicked away with the department’s camera, a recently purchased Canon Rebel XT that would yield high quality digital photos.
She picked a path around the woman, carefully bending the tall grass, looking for a purse or cell phone. Nothing. Maybe they were under the body. Piper took her time, mindful of the slope, as she was a little off-balance with her left arm still in a sling. She’d badly broken the arm in September on Jerusalem Ridge, and pins and a titanium rod now held it together. Another few weeks or so, the doctor said, before it would be fully healed. Until then she had restricted duty: no pushing, pulling, or lifting.
“Seen a lot of death,” Basil observed. Piper knew he referred to his years with the Chicago Police Department’s Gang and Narcotics Division. She’d seen a lot of death, too, from her tours in the Middle East. “But I’ve never seen a fairy killed by arrows, Sheriff Blackwell. A first for me.”
