Hotline to Murder

It is 1964, 10 years after Gary Blanchard’s high school adventures in The Hayloft. He and his love, Penny, are going on the trip of their lives, and, oh yes, they’re getting married along the way. What they don’t know is that they’re being stalked by Alfred, a high school classmate of Penny who has a bellybutton fetish.

Gary and Penny met through a Los Angeles computer matching service, and they’re positive they’re meant for each other. Penny is afraid that her previous flip attitude toward marriage may jinx her. Her best friend, Emily, was murdered a year ago, two days before her own wedding—and she was ideal marriage material. Why should Penny be luckier?

Alfred has never been successful with girls—he attributes his problems to his outie bellybutton—but he knows that Penny is the girl for him. He intends to get her any way he can, and he is prepared to do whatever is necessary to eliminate Gary.

The suspense crackles amid some of the most scenic spots in the western United States, including Lake Tahoe, Reno, Crater Lake, Seattle, and in Glacier, Yellowstone, and Grand Teton National Parks, as well as the redwood trees and rocky cliffs of the northern California coast.

In the second book of the Lillian Morgan series (Thirteen Diamonds was the first) Lillian, a retired math professor, is jolted out of her serene life in a North Carolina retirement community when Mark, her granddaughter’s boyfriend, is accused of sexual harassment. Since he has just started teaching at a small college the charge could end his career almost before it begins. Lillian finds that the school has a harassment policy from hell, but almost immediately a murder occurs and Mark becomes the chief suspect.

Ignoring her fingers-crossed promise to her son not to do any more detective work, Lillian springs into action and finds that in fact there are several other possible suspects. They include a student who doesn’t believe in sex before marriage and a man who maintains a website that lists the license plate numbers of the cars belonging to patrons of local strip clubs.

A key question concerns the identity of the mysterious Shooting Star, a masked dancer at Club Cavalier, one of the strip clubs under surveillance. Lillian has to befriend the owner of the club and do other things senior citizens aren't supposed to before she can unmask the murderer.

Lillian Morgan, a retired mathematics professor who can remember any number but not what she did yesterday, is resigned to living a boring life when Gerald Weiss, a Nobel-prize-winning Economist and fellow resident of Silver Acres Retirement Community starts choking and then dies during a weekly meeting of the bridge club.

Gerald was holding a bridge hand of 13 diamonds when he died, which is rarer than winning the lottery. When the autopsy reveals that his death was caused by an extreme allergic reaction to shellfish in what was supposedly a tuna casserole served by the bridge club lunch committee, Lillian decides to investigate the possibility of murder.

With the help of her best friend, Lillian finds out that two of the four members of the lunch committee were more-or-less girlfriends of Gerald; there may even be senior sex involved. A third member of the lunch committee owed Gerald money and the bridge hand may be a fraud.

Lillian’s investigations almost get her expelled from Silver Acres, but she persists, coming close to getting herself killed in the process.

Karl Patterson, sometime baseball card dealer without visible means of support, doesn't get along all that well with his father, even though he lives in the guest house of his dad's estate on the Palos Verdes Peninsula near Los Angeles rent free. So he is surprised when Richard Patterson, who is founder and CEO of a successful software company called Dionysus, asks for his help to determine whether the number 2 man of Dionysus, Ned Mackay, has a gambling problem. Perhaps it's because Karl may or may not be a compulsive gambler, himself, depending on whom you ask.

Richard assigns his executive assistant, the exotic and ambitious Arrow, to work with Karl. She appears to have some blood from every ethnic group you can name, and the best of each. She helps Karl connect with Ned, and Karl wangles an invitation to fly with him to San Francisco, which brings up the question of what Ned's relationship is to James Buchanan, a puzzling person who likes puzzles, runs what appears to be an illegal gambling casino, and is CEO of a San Francisco conglomerate that owns a piece of just about everything worth owning. Before Karl can make any progress, Ned is found dead in San Francisco with cocaine in his car.

Karl is questioned by the San Francisco police, and now finds himself trying to determine what happened to Ned, and what effect this will have on his father and Dionysus. Questions about James remain, because he seems to want to gain control of Dionysus, and may help Karl buy an expensive baseball card.

Events keep Karl involved long after his father wants him out. Before he's through, he'll be a frequent flyer between L.A. and San Francisco, with sidetrips to Scotland and England. He will have to learn how to work with Arrow, get along with Jacie, Richard's young wife, try to improve his relationship with his father, and--if he wants to survive--watch his back.

The Hayloft: a 1950s mystery features bobby sox, slow dancing, the communist conspiracy, bomb shelters—and murder. Within two weeks after starting his senior year of high school, Gary Blanchard finds himself kicked out of one school and attending another—the school where his cousin, Ralph, mysteriously died six months before. Ralph’s death was labeled an accident, but when Gary talks to people about it, he gets suspicious.

Did Ralph fall from the auditorium balcony, or was he pushed? Had he found a diamond necklace, talked about by cousins recently arrived from England that was supposedly stolen from Dutch royalty by a common ancestor and lost for generations? What about the principal with an abnormal liking for boys? And are Ralph’s ex-girlfriends telling everything they know?

Gary has a talent that helps him “get in good” with a couple of the key girls in his new school’s social/political machine, the powerful Sylvia and the beautiful Natalie. This comes in handy for his quest to find out how Ralph really died. And Ed, his more distant cousin from England who also attends the school, seems to know a lot about Ralph and the lost necklace. It doesn’t hurt that Ed has a pretty younger sister named Kate—or does it?

Things go awry when the father of one of the students is questioned about his ties to communist organizations. The fallout from this upsets the balance of power within the school and could even get Gary thrown out of his second school within a few weeks. Key scenes take place in the hayloft of the barn on the farm where Gary is staying with his aunt and uncle—Ralph’s parents. What happens in that hayloft will affect Gary for the rest of his life—if he survives.

Drake and Melody are teamed up to run a race along the California Coast for a prize of a million dollars—in 1969 when a million is worth something. Neither knows the other is in the race before it starts. They once did undercover work together in England, but this information is supposed to be top secret.

The race sponsor, Giganticorp, is a large and very profitable government military contractor, whose ambitious CEO, Casey Messinger, is connected to the powerful in Washington, which must give him access to classified information.

The nine other pairs of runners entered in the race are world-class marathoners, including a winner of the Boston Marathon. If this competition isn’t enough, somebody tries to knock Drake out of the race before it begins. But Drake and Melody also receive threats calculated to keep them from dropping out. What’s going on?

The stakes increase when startling events produce fatalities and impact the race, leading them to ask whether the Cold War with the USSR is about to heat up. If so, is it safer to line up with the hawks or the doves—because a wrong choice may mean giving up valuable freedom for questionable security.

With their previous training and their own contacts in Washington, Drake and Melody are in the best position to figure out whether various events are connected and who is behind them.

Their other challenge is to keep themselves in good physical condition to be able to compete for the prize money while running through the spectacular scenery of the California coast from the Mexican border to San Francisco.

Have you ever wondered how a trial lawyer can sleep at night after helping a client he/she knows is guilty, beat the legal system? I have. Have you ever wondered how an attorney would feel if that same recently acquitted client kills a second time? Again, I have, and these very questions prompted me to write a dark mystery/thriller about just such an attorney…I call it DEFENDING EVIL.

Travis Knight is an extraordinary Criminal Defense Attorney winning high profile cases in Atlanta. One of his recently acquitted clients kills again, which has Travis and his wife Julie, questioning what he does for a living. Travis is shaken to his core, but being a consummate lawyer, he is able to move past his feelings of guilt; Julie isn’t.

In a bizarre twist, a mysterious vigilante begins executing Travis’ clients after he wins them an acquittal. This righteous vigilante decides that the clients Travis is helping to put back into society are guilty, and don't deserve to live - the vigilante delivers ultimate justice.

The police only half-heartedly search for the vigilante; off the record, they are glad someone is cleaning-up after the hot-shot attorney.

The vigilante's attention turns to the source, and sends Travis an ultimatum: stop defending guilty clients or he will be the next to be executed. Risking his life, and his marriage, Travis refuses to be intimidated, and continues to defend clients accused of murder.

This story chronicles the labyrinth of high-speed twists and turns of a deadly cat-and-mouse game…a game that can end with only one winner.

Buckle-up and enjoy the ride!

Best Regards,

Charles Shea - Author of DEFENDING EVIL

When Riley Harper discovers his old neighborhood bully is now a successful executive within his own company, Riley decides Bryce must pay for all the cruel acts he committed against him and his friends. He decides that Bryce Loring Must Die! In this Digital Short, Bill Walker delivers a taste of suspense and black humor.

Lederhosen, accordions....and a dead body! And a dead body is just what coffee roaster Jennifer Penny found when she walked into her coffee booth at the Polka Daze Festival. While unearthing clues, Jennifer dodges the demands of her soon to be ex-husband, and the advances of a sexy cop and a flirtatious butcher. She'll need more than a double espresso to stay on her toes and solve this mystery.

Newspaper reporter America Miles knows that picturesque Hyacinth, Missouri, is a place to raise a family, not a fuss. She's used to the slow pace of small-town life. And she realizes that the way her love life is going, her cat is likely getting more action than she is.

But all that changes suddenly when Harrison Fielding, her mean-as-a-snake editor, keels over clutching a brownie baked by Sandy Betts, America's best friend and the food editor at the paper. With Sandy suddenly under suspicion for the death, America finds herself drawn into the investigation. She soon sees herself looking at her co-workers in a new light.

There's just one problem. Everybody hated Harrison Fielding.

There's a tough-talking photographer with a chip on his shoulder, and a cops reporter with a decidely murky history. The superstar reporter barely seems to notice the editor's been killed, and the sports editor seems more interested in getting home in time for wrestling than discussing any crimes.

Only one local detective can help America view things objectively, and she's not sure she can stand that much arrogance in one room, thank you very much.

But when the body count starts to rise, America realizes she might need all the help she can get. After all, reporting can be dangerous. In fact, it seems some stories can get you killed.

From the Author