Slipstream - A Novel

Have you ever wondered:

• Why Asians love "Hello Kitty"?
• What the tattooed Chinese characters really say?
• How to achieve feng shui for optimum make-out sessions?
• Where Asian cuties meet the white guys who love them?

Then you'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll realize this book is better than a Broadway production of Cats when you read scenes that include:

• twenty-something Lindsey Owyang mastering the intricacies of office voicemail and fax dialing
• an authentic Chinese banquet where Number One Son shows off his language skills by speaking "Chinglish"
• dating disasters with grandsons of Grandma's mahjong partners
• the discovery that the real China looks nothing like the pavilion at Disney World
• karaoke

And all the while Lindsey is falling in lust with the "white devil" in her politically correct office. But will Grandma's stinky Chinese ointments send him running? Or will Lindsey realize that the path to true love lies somewhere between the dim sum and the pepperoni pizza?

Hashem is not the man Latifa married. Once full of life, congenial and accepting of Latifa?s independence, Hashem becomes difficult, moody, and demands that his wife begin acting more like a conventional Muslim woman. Career-oriented Latifa balks at his attitude and their marriage suffers. After the birth of their daughter Sophia, Kabul is invaded, the borders close, and former traditions for women are reestablished. Forced to live a life she detests, Latifa encounters danger around every corner?not only from enemy fire, but also from her own husband who suspects she is harboring a dark secret.

Their country is in turmoil along with their marriage and Latifa is forced to make an agonizing decision that will change their lives forever in Her Angel Eyes.

But the savage saga of Robert Browne did not end there. In 2000, Smit, now retired, joined forces with Charlie Hess, an ex-FBI agent and former CIA operative, to reexamine the cold-case murder files of the local Sheriff's Department. With the addition of amateur forensics buff Scott Fischer, the Apple Dumpling Gang was born.

As their volunteer work continued, Smit, Hess, and Fischer came upon a taunting letter written by Browne, hinting that the death of Heather Church was only the tip of the iceberg. What other law enforcement officials had simply ignored, the Apple Dumpling Gang took on with single-minded determination. Charlie Hess began a correspondence with Browne in which, over the course of dozens of letters, the killer teasingly spun out the details of a horrific killing spree spread over thirty years and nine states. The tally, according to Browne: forty-nine deaths, making him one of the most prolific serial murderers in the annals of American crime.

Hess's unique insight into criminal psychology, honed over his years developing informants and working as a polygraph operator, made him uniquely suited to match wits with the cagey and canny killer. But Browne was every bit the retired cop's equal: quickwitted, mercurial, and charismatic, with a penchant for riddles and a lifetime full of grisly secrets.

A riveting account of the complex and chilling cat-and-mouse game Hess and Browne played over five years, Hello Charlie details Browne's bloody swath of murder -- by strangulation, poisoning, and dismemberment -- even as it explores the special bond forged between the cop and the killer, allowing Hess unprecedented access into the mind of a remorseless psychopath.

As compulsively readable as any crime novel, Hello Charlie picks up where The Silence of the Lambs left off, with the incredible true story of one man's search for justice with a murderer as his guide.