How do cops investigate a white-collar crime?

Posted on by Diana Deverell

And how does an obvious suspect prove she’s innocent?

Sometimes, thieves don’t get their hands dirty when it comes to crime. Sometimes, it’s easy to pass along blame and culpability.

Particularly when the workplace is your backdrop, and the computerized bill payment system is under your control.

In this issue, we deal with those two questions and more in ten new short stories plus an essay about Agatha Christie and the Croydon Poisonings.

My story “Reckless Endangerment” features Winnie Yates, former cellmate of Nora Dockson, heroine of my legal thriller series. Winnie’s worked hard since her release from Oregon’s correctional center for female felons.

Happily married to Jake Denver and mother to nine-year-old Elijah, Winnie runs a freelance bookkeeping service from her home near Spokane.

Unfortunately, a review of the financial records of the owner of the successful Valley Pub and Grill confirms his gut-sense that money is mysteriously disappearing from his accounts.

If her client goes to the cops, she’ll be the first person they investigate for embezzlement. Winnie has another suspect in mind. But will the owner help her identify the real culprit before the cops ruin her?

Come enjoy the MCM syndicate’s take on White Collar Crime…if you dare.

Treat yourself to some great reads. Available in ebook, paperback, and large print. Click on the cover above or follow this universal link to your favorite retailer to buy your copy!

LOOK OUT FOR EXTREME WEATHER!

Posted on by Diana Deverell

The current issue of MYSTERY, CRIME, AND MAYHEM is waiting for you.

Weather can bring out the best in us. Neighbors shoveling sidewalks. Friends helping during a flood. Folks opening their homes to strangers struck by lightning.

Bad weather can also bring out the worst. The storm takes over and in the chaos, criminal behavior may have no consequences.

Join the MCM syndicate as we explore different weather patterns and how some people take advantage of them. While others fight them.

I chose to set my story in the aftermath of a major ice storm that crippled Oregon’s Willamette Valley last January.  Star Stevens gets an urgent summons from her father. She must come to Eugene immediately to help him rescue a mutual friend from financial disaster.

In “Mother Nature Lends a Hand,” I learn what’s been going on with  three of the main characters from my comic mystery, Murder, Ken Kesey, and Me. I think you’ll enjoy revisiting Eugene and catching up with them, too!

Issue Twenty of MCM. So Criminal. It’s Good.

Get your copy from the publisher or follow this universal link to your favorite online bookseller.

FBI SPECIAL AGENT DAWNA SHEPHERD IS BACK!

Posted on by Diana Deverell

FBI Special Agent Dawna Shepherd first appeared in my fiction in Night on Fire, my second international thriller which is set in Denmark during a war between two rival biker gangs.

I enjoy writing about Dawna and she stars in many short stories and comes to the aid of Casey Collins, my thriller heroine, in the next two novels in that series.

In “Foul Trouble”, my eighteenth short mystery story featuring Dawna, she returns to Copenhagen on a temporary assignment to aid the Danish National Police. Her efforts to nail passport fraudsters are undercut by a leaker from her own side.

“Foul Trouble” was just published in BETRAYAL, the seventeenth and newest issue of Mystery, Crime, and Mayhem.

BETRAYAL, Issue 17 OF MYSTERY, CRIME, AND MAYHEM

For this issue, nine writers took wildly different takes on the theme of betrayal. The result is great entertainment!

You can buy your copy of BETRAYAL directly from the publisher or follow the links she provides to your favorite online bookseller. Available in digital and print.