Karen Hunter Mysteries
The Lost Cipher
Several young women have been murdered in a small city
in Georgia. The police know that they are being committed
by a serial killer, but cannot determine the cause of the
women's deaths and have no leads to catch the killer.
A three year old letter is found at the local college, which threatens to kill Karen Hunter, leader of the Middlefield, Georgia Major Crimes Unit. It taunts the police to decipher a code he has put into the letter with his name.
Karen directs her team to investigate past cases and lovers in her life and to solve the cipher while more mysterious killings continue to occur in the city.
The killer mails a second letter directly to Karen, which has another cipher included and a deadly promise to kill Karen very soon when she least expects it.
While she and her team investigate the murders, Karen renews a relationship with an old boyfriemd who she cannot rule out later as a suspect because of his behavior. During the affair, she shares a dark, family secret with him. Karen's husband discovers the affair and threatens to expose her to her friends.
Karen and her team work furiously to decipher the codes, but will it be in time to save more lifes as well as her own?
The Orion Factor
Karen Hunter and her Major Crimes Unit of the Middlefield,
Georgia Police Department are visited by a psychic in early March who tells them about two murders she has 'seen'.
Karen and her team are mystified because no murders have been reported, so they disbelieve the psychic and ESP in general.
Later that month, a missing person report is filed for Dana McPhee, a prominent physicist and professor, by his wife, Anne Kelly who is also an important archeologist and professor attending the annual Archeology Conference at Middlefield College. McPhee had gone to the hotel lounge, but had not returned to their room.
The morning after the report was filed, Police find that both professors have been murdered on the previous night. Anne Kelly was found strangled in her hotel room and Dana McPhee was found shot to death in an old, rundown house in Middlefield.
Karen remembers that the psychic had said a woman was with the man she had 'seen' murdered, but Karen and the MCU can make no sense of it.
Eight ciphers are sent by an unknown person to Karen. She believes the ciphers contain critical clues to solving the murders.
Curiously, GBI tells Karen that another man was shot to death in Macon on the same night as the professors. Karen and the MCU must solve the ciphers to find the killer.
Death Comes to Ely
A large farm in the village of Ely is located in the city of Middlefield, Georgia. Owned by farmer Jeffrey Waters, Ely becomes the focal point for an investigation when Waters takes a walk one evening with his dog and is later found dead. Surveyors hired by the new farm owners discover human bones in a depression in one of the old Waters' farm hayfields.
Karen Hunter and the Middlefield MCU find that eighteen other depressions contain human gravesites also. A forensic anthropologist from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation determines that all the gravesites remains are those of women who unfortunately cannot be readily identified due to their mutilation. During the investigation, several letters are received by the MCU from a man calling himself, Baphomet, who claims he is the killer. Human bones are also found along a jogging trail in McCrery Park in Middlefield.
Karen and the GBI believe that they have more than one killer operating in Middlefield. One of Karen's female detectives in the MCU, Carol Morgan goes missing. Karen works feverishly to decipher the sinister messages to identify the killer and save Carol. Will she succeed?
The Stillwater Incident
July 18, 1979 was a typical Georgia day in the city of Middlefield until a mailman delivering a
package discovered the bodies of a couple, Marisa and John Forrester, who have been brutally murdered in their home.
Middlefield detectives investigate the crime for years to solve the identity of the perpetrator only to fail and
have the case go cold.
Thirty-four years later, the Major Crimes Unit of the Middlefield Police Department is asked to re-open the unsolved case at the request of the Forresters' two grown children who were present in the home at the time of the murders.
A psychic is called in to assist the MCU who reveals some of the evidence originally collected was not used in the murders. Major Karen Hunter and her team are led through a tortuous tangle of possible suspects until the suspicious death of an old witness completely changes the focus and direction of the investigation.
New Releases
Of Friends and Others
In this memoir, Chief Robert Connor, now retired, reviews his life and experience as the Augusta Police Chief
at a time when he was faced with a series of burglaries in the Glendale Lake District.
The burglaries appeared, at first, as possible teenage pranks, because all the items stolen from the cottages were female undergarments. Connor and his detectives realized their mistake when the raids expanded to the vicious murder of a young woman.
An intense investigation discovered evidence, which pointed to several suspects, one of whom was Rob's mentor and close friend, Roy Hepburn, who lived in the District. Stymied by the lack of progress to solve the crimes, Connor devised a dangerous, illegal sting to capture the killer before he could murder again.
Recollections, An Olio of Short Stories
This collection of short stories delves into the minds of its characters displaying the breadths of their imaginations and relationships to reality.