Title Deadly Yours
Author Cyndi L. Stuart
Genre Mystery
Publisher The Wild Rose Press
Book Blurb
This Killer Won’t Let You Run Away!
A letter, sealed with blood red wax, arrives in a small coastal town. Samantha’s hopes of a new, quiet life are shattered. The killer is back. Like years before, the crime scenes mimic classic mysteries Samantha once taught in her English Lit class—The Art of Detection. Is one murder staged from an Ellery Queen novel? P.D. James? Sherlock Holmes? Maybe more?
Five years ago, strangers died. This time—friends. As the body count climbs, this menace must be found, or the killings may never stop. What’s hidden in the tiny details? Why is the killer taunting her? As the killer closes in, does she once again cut and run or stand and fight? What will Sam risk to bring this nightmare to an end?
Excerpt
Just past the coffee station stood a large whiteboard. A young, tall officer paced in front of it as he made notes and pinned up photos. A photo of a sea chest caught Samantha’s attention. Her head spun to the next picture which showed the same chest with a body inside. The note written alongside the image read, “killed by a sharp weapon—run through trunk into body.” Her eyes scanned the top of the board and then stopped on the photo and the words written below—Victim Robert Brignone.
Sam shoved herself away from the counter and ran back into the conference room. She wrenched the door wide open, raced inside, and slammed it shut. The three investigators huddled around the letter on the table, stared up in alarm.
“Was that trunk found in a museum?” Sam demanded.
Detective Jessica Noguchi’s face looked confused. “What trunk?”
“The body in the trunk!” Sam shouted and pointed behind her. “On the whiteboard. Was it found in a museum?”
Jessica squinted through the window to the squad room and then her eyes darted back to Sam. Oh, crap! She’s seen the incident board. Even though it contained details of an unrelated crime scene, she didn’t want to discuss an ongoing case with a civilian.
Before Jess could respond, the criminal profiler, Colin Davies stood up. “No, not in a museum exactly, but...” There, he thought as his voice trailed off, a spark of recognition in her eyes behind the fear.
The pitch of her voice rose. She turned toward Colin. “Then…a-a-a party? Was there a party in the room with the ch-ch-ch-chest?”
Jess and Chief Marlene Porter stared at her stunned. Colin answered again. “Yes.” He walked over toward the door. “He was found in an old sea trunk two days after a party at his home.”
Sam’s next words came out as a whisper. “It’s the killer.”
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Author Biography
Cyndi didn’t start out life as a mystery writer. But one day something unexpected happened—she became a woman of a certain age.
“What in the world are you waiting for?” said the voice in Cyndi Stuart’s head as she woke up on her fiftieth birthday. “That mystery novel isn’t going to write itself! And YOU, sweet pea, are NOT getting any younger.”
So, after years spent as a naturalist on the north Oregon coast and PNW garden speaker, Cyndi dusted off her old Comm degree, left technical writing behind and got to work on short stories, flash fiction, and personal essays. But in secret she tapped away on her first mystery. Yes, you guessed it, Deadly Yours. The challenge of creating stories from her own imagination, current events, history, and things she might have overheard at the local coffee shop is what makes her happy and where her passion for writing began.
She now lives on a small island in south Puget Sound where she and her husband, a potter and artist, run an artisan business. When not reading, writing, or procrastinating, Cyndi can be found hiking, biking, or swimming in the local lakes, streams, and even Puget Sound (in a wetsuit).
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