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| Some good moments. |
For ambitious, troubled architect Ray Jackson, the nightmare begins one sultry California night when his wife disappears. No phone call, no ransom note, no body, reveals whether Leigh is dead or alive.
Then, suddenly, a woman shows up on Ray's doorstep demanding answers: Kathleen, an old friend of Leigh's. Ray wants answers, too, but his questions seem strange and shady to Kat. Suspected by his wife's friend and by the police, Ray launches a desperate and alarming search of his own.
Using a collection of keys he has held on to since he was a boy -- keys to homes he and his mother once lived in -- Ray quietly yet boldly enters each house, one by one, hoping to unlock the secrets of his own past.
As past and present collide, as a chilling mystery begins to unravel, Ray is suddenly confronted with the most agonizing decision of his life -- to face his own violence-laden past, acting to prevent another horrendous act of violence, or not. His choice will leave nothing and no one the same.
Together they have written twelve Nina Reilly legal thrillers, a stand-alone thriller, "Keeper of the Keys," and one short story collection, SINISTER SHORTS.
Pamela, a graduate of Harvard Law School, practiced law in Monterey, San Pablo and South Lake Tahoe, California, for 16 years. She lives in northern California.
Mary worked as a multimedia editor for many years. She lives with her husband and children near San Francisco. - See more at: Perri O'Shaughnessy
"Acts of Malice"
Amid the sparkling snow-swept mountains of Lake Tahoe, Nina Reilly has made a home, juggling the demands of her one-woman law practice and raising a teenage son alone.
Now Nina has taken on a case that will threaten everything she holds dear, drawing her into a tangled web of loyalties and alliances within one of Lake Tahoe's most prominent families.
Her client: a man accused of murdering his own brother--on the ski slopes of Tahoe. The law says Nina must give Jim Strong the best possible defense. But Strong's family has turned violently against him, and suddenly Nina is at the center of the storm.
Strong's family runs a venerable South Lake Tahoe institution, the posh Paradise Ski Resort. When Jim's brother Alex dies during a frenzied race down the mountain, the coroner points to unusually brutal injuries and declares that they could not possibly be related to the accident. Jim is charged with murdering his own brother.
Instead of rallying around Jim, his family condemns him. Is he a brutal murderer or an innocent scapegoat? Jim's father is obsessed with his brother's ghost; Alex's widow, an exotic and mercurial snowboard champ, carries a torch for Jim. To complicate an already tangled web, Jim's own wife, Heidi, disappears, leaving a note. She thinks Jim is responsible for Alex's death.
It's up to Nina Reilly to unravel the complex family alliances and defend her client -- but Nina's distracted by her own intense and unexpected love affair. A terrifying confrontation with a psychopath causes the two sides of her life to come crashing together in the ultimate act of malice.
