In the wealthy Gold Coast enclave of Westport, a feud between
mystery writers turns deadly—and retired spy Dasha Petrov must find
the real killer to clear her name.
Once
one of the most lethal secret agents in the world, Dasha Petrov has
hunted Nazis, Communists, and one common murderer (in The Sea
Glass Murders, the first Dasha
Petrov thriller). But now it’s 1991, two years after that
unpleasantness, and Dasha is living a
sedate life appropriate
to an
elderly widow in wealthy Westport, Connecticut, spoiling her
grandchildren and innocently flirting with two of her neighbors, the
rival mystery novelists
Barnaby Jayne and Michael Aubrey.
The
two writers, both wildly successful and many times married, cordially
despise each other. Dasha thinks they’re just two silly men with
big egos, but the writers’ feud boils over into a bizarre series of
attacks that starts with a blowgun dart and escalates to booby traps
and car bombs. And when Jayne and Aubrey both turn up dead, the
evidence points to one suspect—Dasha herself.
Now
Dasha has to once again call upon her cunning mind and capacity for
extreme violence, honed by her younger years as a Nazi-killing
partisan and a top-rank CIA agent. Teaming up with her old allies,
Westport police chief Tony DeFranco and local TV reporter Tracy
Taggart, Dasha sets out to clear her name, find
the real killer, and figure out why she was targeted—while dodging
jealous wives, a sleazy tabloid reporter, child spies, and a fearsome
Mafia hit man, leading to a tense and dramatic confrontation.
Fast-paced
and filled with intriguing characterization, Murder This Close
is a stunning murder mystery with a twisty cerebral plot and
plenty of hard-hitting action.