Later this month my new mystery, THE MUSE OF VIOLENCE, will be published by Swallow Tail Press.

Inspired by Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None (also known as Ten Little Indians), THE MUSE OF VIOLENCE is the story of a group of people living on an island (Manhattan!) who must face the terrifying realization that their lives are hanging in the balance.

“The writers’ group is just a memory now.  I can still picture them sitting in my apartment—four women and two men in addition to myself—reading stories to each other in a search for fictional truth that seemed more important than real life.  That was before death pulled up a chair and started spinning tales of its own.  We were so naive, all we did was complain about the heat.”

Will Schaefer, a New Yorker transplanted from the Midwest, earns his living crafting press releases for a shady corporation.  One night a week he hosts a writers’ group in his apartment, to which the members—four women and two men besides himself—bring their stories and all the intense emotions that inspired them.  Will is cast in the role of amateur therapist mediating among unreliable narrators, even as he falls in love with the elusive Sara.  When one of the other women is brutally murdered, the group begins to turn on itself.  And when more deaths follow, those who remain are left to face the suspicion—and finally the terrifying certainty—that one of them is a psychopathic killer.  Is a sequel to Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None being played out in their lives?