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Why Was She Moaning?
The Moaning Lisa follows an older married pair of sleuths who land in the middle of a disturbing mystery inside the Gilded Gates assisted living community, where several residents have gone missing. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
Almost fifteen years ago we published the three Paco and Molly mysteries: Locks and Cream Cheese, Hot Grudge Sunday, and Boston Scream Pie. We had established their ages in their sixties, but now they would be in their eighties—not exactly vigorous protagonists in pursuit of a mystery. Coincidentally, elderly relatives of ours were kicking and screaming over the prospect of moving into a retirement facility. Their reluctance and fears sparked the idea for a setting where Paco and Molly might flourish. One day, just kidding around about the Mona Lisa, one of us happened to say “Moaning Lisa” and it clicked right away. Who was Lisa and why was she moaning? We dove into the plot.
I loved the characters of Paco and Molly; their personalities work well together. Was there anything from your own life that you put into the characters in your novel?
When we started writing together decades ago, we hadn’t even considered writing mysteries—until we visited Rosemary’s father, Dr. Saul K. Pollack, a prominent psychoanalyst in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. That visit set us on a happy new course. Her father, a widower in his seventies, had a housekeeper/gourmet cook named Dorothy. She was sixty-three, with a beach ball figure, waddle walk, taffy-colored curls, and a good-natured, nosy-body personality. She had never gone past the tenth grade, but she was super-smart and keenly observant.
Dorothy also had a unique way of expressing herself. “I have to take my calcium so I don’t get osteoferocious.” During our visit, Rosemary’s father pulled out a piece of paper from his desk drawer and handed it to us: his secret list of Dorothy’s sayings. He thought we could submit it to Reader’s Digest. Back home in Severna Park, Maryland, we studied the list and decided, “Forget Reader’s Digest. Dorothy belongs to us.” We named her Molly. Her frequent witticisms were “malaprops,” but we named them Mollyprops. The concept of malaprops originated with the character Mrs. Malaprop in a 1775 comedy of manners, The Rivals, by Robert B. Sheridan.
When Locks and Cream Cheese, our first in the series, was initially conceived, we envisioned ourselves—our own alter egos—as protagonists Simon and Rachel. But Paco and Molly came across so powerfully in the writing that they soon edged us out.
Paco is modeled after a Barcelona, Spain, police inspector I met socially aboard a U.S. Naval ship docked in that city’s harbor. I was a field engineer for RCA at the time. The short, fit, and vibrant inspector was visiting the ship to practice his English. For an entire evening, the inspector told me one impressive anecdote after another. His bushy eyebrow movements were a “tell” of his current emotions. They moved together and individually, making the man memorable even to this day.
What was the hardest part about writing a mystery story, where you constantly have to give just enough to keep the mystery alive until the big reveal?
The hardest part of writing a mystery story is building and keeping track of the details. After razzle-dazzling readers with twists, turns, and the black art of red herrings—and perhaps a subplot—we need to leave a trail of clues that make sense. It’s a matter of maintaining the readers’ trust. We want them to come back and read our next mystery.
Can you tell us more about what’s in store for Paco and Molly and what the next mystery they will have to solve is?
Any new Paco and Molly mysteries will sit on the shelf for a time while we pursue our next adventures. Last year we published our first spy novel, Kent and Katcha: Espionage, Spycraft, Romance. It won five stars and an award. We are now working on the sequel, Kauai Spies and Bald-faced Lies. Our fifth short-story collection is also brewing. Who knows if and when our Paco and Molly muse will strike again. Meanwhile, our twenty-one published books are currently displayed at our website, www/magicile.com.
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Now in their eighties, Paco and Molly have moved into Gilded Gates, an assisted living community in Maryland. They expect their golden years to be blissful. They are dead wrong. Some residents are missing and no one knows what has happened to them.
One suspicious resident is a sleepwalker and claims to have heard mysterious moaning during his night walks, but for the life of him he can’t figure out where the anguished sounds are coming from.
“Inspector Paco” has retired as head of the Black Rain Corners police force. But many residents of Gilded Gates fear they might be next on the list of the missing. They beg Paco to investigate.
Naturally, Molly also pokes her keen nose and shrewd insights into the baffling disappearances.
The Moaning Lisa
The Moaning Lisa follows Paco and Molly LeSoto, an older married pair of sleuths who land in the middle of a disturbing mystery inside the Gilded Gates assisted living community. A missing resident. Strange moans in the night. A stone turret that hides something far worse than dust and spiders. The story builds piece by piece as Paco and Molly tug at each loose thread until the whole place starts to unravel around them. It is a classic cozy mystery with a darker edge, tied together by the couple’s warmth, humor, and stubborn grit.
I felt surprisingly swept up in the tone of the book. The writing moves with an easy rhythm that let me sink into the world without thinking too hard about it. Sometimes the dialogue cracked me up with its little quirks, especially Molly’s playful mangling of words. Other times, the tension tightened just enough to make me pause. The setting also hit me in a way I did not expect. There is something both comforting and spooky about an assisted living home that tries very hard to look polished while hiding secrets in back stairwells. I found myself rooting for Paco and Molly, not just because they are skilled, but because they feel so relatable, creaky knees and all.
There were moments when the plot leaned into familiar mystery beats, and I caught myself predicting turns before they landed. Still, I did not mind much. The charm of the story is not in shocking twists. It is in how the characters bounce off one another and how their age actually shapes the plot, rather than sitting in the background. I liked that. It made the danger feel different. Slower. Closer. The book also has a gentle emotional core. It touches on loneliness, trust, and the strange little worlds older adults create around themselves. That part stuck with me more than I expected.
I would recommend The Moaning Lisa to readers who enjoy light mysteries with heart. It is especially good for fans of amateur sleuth stories, cozy mysteries with an eerie twist, or tales featuring older protagonists who still have fire in them. If you want something that feels warm but still gives you a few chills, this book will hit the spot.
Pages: 234 | ASIN : B0FJ4WVHYQ
TORRENT
Torrent by Anthony B. Gray is an emotionally charged psychological thriller that begins with a brutal tragedy and dives headfirst into grief, guilt, and the chaos that follows. The story centers on Samuel, a high-powered Atlanta attorney whose carefully ordered life unravels when his wife, Monica, dies by suicide following years of emotional neglect and shared trauma. The narrative takes us from opulent law offices to the hauntingly beautiful and treacherous wilderness of Canyon Park, where Samuel embarks on a trip meant to honor Monica’s memory and ends up confronting his own inner demons, dangerous strangers, and possibly something far darker than grief.
Gray’s writing is bold and unflinching. The opening chapters hit like a hammer. They’re vivid, tragic, full of jagged edges. He paints Samuel with a kind of clinical coldness, showing a man addicted to control and blind to emotion. And yet, as the story unfolds, there’s an unexpected tenderness beneath the grief. Gray doesn’t shy away from uncomfortable truths: the way ambition can slowly rot relationships, how denial makes us complicit, and how even the most successful lives can be hollowed out by loneliness. The pacing is tight, with bursts of poetic introspection giving way to a fast-moving, character-driven plot. I was impressed by how Gray weaves Monica’s presence through the whole book. She’s gone, but never really absent.
There were moments when the dialogue leaned into melodrama. Some scenes felt like they were pulled from a pulpy noir film more than a grounded psychological tale. Still, that unevenness didn’t dull the emotional impact. In fact, I think it gave the story a strange rhythm. Moments of emotional realism snapped against bursts of surreal tension. The latter half of the book turns almost horror-like, not with ghosts or monsters, but with the monsters we carry and the secrets we bury. It’s weird, gripping, and sometimes hard to read, but I couldn’t look away.
If you’ve ever wrestled with guilt, if you’ve loved someone too late, or if you just like your thrillers with a side of soul-searching, Torrent is worth your time. It starts with heartbreak and ends somewhere darker, but also, strangely, with a kind of redemption. I’d recommend it for readers who appreciate layered characters, emotional messiness, and stories that don’t tidy themselves up for comfort.
Pages: 149 | ASIN : B0DRJ8LSHC
Dry The Rain
Dry The Rain is a haunting and intimate novel told from the perspective of a girl who survived a prolonged and horrific kidnapping. As she recounts the trauma she endured at the hands of her captor, referred to simply as “He,” the story unspools through a blend of raw reflection, fragmented memory, and unfiltered commentary on how the world consumes pain for entertainment. The novel explores the aftermath of trauma, the commodification of suffering, and the tension between truth and storytelling, especially when a survivor’s life is turned into a streaming series. What unfolds is not a traditional narrative, but a personal reckoning.
Dry The Rain made me feel like I was sitting inside someone’s broken mind as it slowly tried to piece itself together. The writing is stripped down and jagged. It loops and circles back, never quite giving in to what most readers might expect from a story like this. I admired how much it refused to dress up trauma or package it neatly. The narrator doesn’t want pity. She wants control. The writing felt deeply personal, but also sharp, like it was daring me to keep reading even when it hurt. I found that power both upsetting and moving. And honestly, there were parts that made me put the book down, not because of gore, but because of the sheer, quiet intensity of what was being said.
Still, the voice of the book is what stayed with me. It’s messy. It repeats itself. But it also felt frighteningly real. The way the narrator talks about the TV adaptation of her life and how others misunderstand her survival resonated with me. She’s not asking for your attention. She’s telling you what it costs to get it. Some of the ideas in the book are brutal in their simplicity, especially when she talks about beauty, control, and the way society consumes victims.
I would recommend Dry The Rain to readers who don’t mind being uncomfortable. This isn’t a thriller or a trauma memoir with easy lessons. It’s a reflective, original story for those who want to sit with hard truths and aren’t looking for tidy endings. If you’ve ever felt that pain is something too often turned into content, this book will speak to that unease.
Pages: 223
Magic and Writing
Zero Knowledge is a complex tale involving murder, encrypted clues, financial betrayal, and a race to uncover a hidden truth about Bitcoin’s mysterious origins. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
The idea for Zero Knowledge for me began while spending time in Zug, Switzerland—where the story is set—within a vibrant crypto environment. The combination of this idyllic location and cutting-edge developments in blockchain technology proved to be a powerful source of inspiration. In this setting, all the research I needed for the story was readily accessible.
Your book has some very interesting characters that have their character flaws, but are still likable. How do you go about creating characters for your story?
The characters in Zero Knowledge evolved as I wrote the story. Duan was shaped in part by some of my own personality traits, which help explain his flaws. For Mina, I “borrowed” several of my wife Marina’s strong characteristics—though unlike Mina, my wife is in perfect health.
I enjoyed how the relationship between Lisa-Lotte and her father, Bernt, deepen over time. Based on feedback from beta readers, I added a backstory to explain Lisa-Lotte’s decision to join the police force.
I’m particularly pleased that reviewers praised the characters; developing them was a major focus for me throughout the writing process.
I felt that there were a lot of great twists and turns throughout the novel. Did you plan this before writing the novel, or did the twists develop organically while writing?
I began the writing process by outlining the story and crafting detailed character descriptions to bring them to life for myself. The method of Luc’s murder was the starting point, although at that early stage, I hadn’t yet defined the motive. In addition to writing, I have a passion for magic, and I incorporated techniques of misdirection—commonly used in magic—to lead the reader astray and heighten the suspense.
Magic and writing share many similarities. In magic, you often begin with the effect you want to create, then develop a method and presentation to entertain and continually surprise your audience. This process comes naturally to me and proved tremendously helpful while writing Zero Knowledge.
Will there be a follow-up novel to this story? If so, what aspects of the story will the next book cover?
I feel that both Duan and Lisa-Lotte still have plenty of mileage left in them. I already have an initial idea for a unique opening to a potential next book. That said, the way everything came together in Zero Knowledge—leaving no loose ends—will be hard to top.
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Arnaud Pascolo’s latest international crime thriller is more than an intense whodunit or police procedural – it’s a gripping mystery that begins with a shock and never lets you come up for air! You have to do more than put together the pieces and find the villain – you have to figure out the crime!
Crypto company BionTic is facing financial difficulties, but a strange text message gives Luc Stark hope for a brighter future. The meeting invitation results in his being handed an envelope labeled “Clue One,” which he is instructed to open after leaving. Moments later, the man answers a phone call, and Luc suddenly collapses and dies. When police detectives begin looking into the strange death, they learn that is only the beginning of the mystery.
Secrets of the Shield
Secrets of the Shield by D.M. Currie is a raw, pulse-pounding crime thriller rooted deep in real-world law enforcement. Told through the lens of a seasoned cop, the novel dives into the gritty underbelly of Los Angeles County policing, starting from a traumatizing encounter at a gas station in the protagonist’s youth all the way to tactical operations against cartel assassins. It’s part autobiography, part thriller, and 100% an unflinching look at the sacrifices, darkness, and small victories woven into a life of service.
From the very beginning, Currie’s writing seized my attention with an unrelenting grip. His opening scene, depicting a harrowing struggle in a hospital bed against imagined attackers following spinal surgery, was profoundly affecting. I could feel the panic and brokenness resonate deeply as I read. It is this brutal authenticity that distinguishes Secrets of the Shield. When Currie recounts the grueling demands of academy life, including the torment of abusive instructors, or exposes the vulnerability of rookies navigating the dangers of custody work, it becomes clear that this is no sanitized portrayal of law enforcement. It is raw, it is painful, and it is unflinchingly real. I admired Currie’s refusal to soften these realities for the reader.
Currie’s meticulous attention to detail adds a compelling depth to the narrative, particularly in chapters such as “L.A. Burns” and “And the Riots Roll,” where he vividly captures the intensity of large-scale unrest and tactical operations. His ability to immerse the reader in the operational realities of law enforcement is impressive and lends a striking authenticity to the story. Yet it is when Currie turns his focus to the emotional heart of the narrative, most notably in the heartbreaking account of Catalina Cano’s story in “Peaceful Park Apartments: Explosion of Evil,” that his writing truly shines. The emotional resonance he achieves is powerful and deeply moving, offering moments of unexpected poignancy that elevate the novel beyond traditional crime thrillers.
What hit me hardest, though, was the clear cost of the job. Currie shows better than any fiction I’ve read in a long time that wearing the badge means a slow erosion of yourself. You see it in his recounting of being physically wrecked, emotionally detached, and spiritually exhausted. The title Secrets of the Shield isn’t just clever, it’s painfully accurate. Behind the shield, behind the uniform, there’s a heavy, heavy price. I walked away from this book with more respect for what real cops endure than I ever had before.
Secrets of the Shield isn’t just a crime novel. It’s a bruised, bleeding love letter to the men and women who choose to stand between chaos and order. If you’re a fan of gritty realism, if you liked Joseph Wambaugh’s The New Centurions or Michael Connelly’s Bosch series but want something even more visceral and personal, this book will absolutely blow you away. It’s not for the faint of heart, but for those who can stomach the darkness, it’s a powerful and unforgettable ride.
Pages: 429 | ASIN : B0F2ZGYBLH
Zero Knowledge
Zero Knowledge is a gripping techno-thriller that blends the raw emotion of a terminal illness with a cryptic, high-stakes mystery rooted in the world of cryptocurrency. The story begins with a tragedy—Mina, diagnosed with terminal cancer, decides to end her life on her birthday, leaving her husband Duan devastated. But just when you think you’re reading a love story about grief and letting go, the book shifts gears. Luc, Mina’s friend’s husband and a key figure in the crypto world, dies mysteriously. What unfolds is a complex tale involving murder, encrypted clues, financial betrayal, and a race to uncover a hidden truth tied to Bitcoin’s mysterious origins.
From the first page, Pascolo’s writing grabbed me. He opens with a personal gut-punch and gradually builds a suspenseful narrative that snowballs into a larger, more intricate conspiracy. The emotional weight of Mina’s euthanasia is handled with striking intimacy. I felt the grief. I felt the love. But it’s not just sadness; it’s how Pascolo turns the knife slowly and then tosses the reader into the frigid waters of a cyber-thriller. His prose is crisp. His dialogue feels real, sometimes painfully so. There’s no padding here—just raw feeling and tight plotting. And the alternating storylines work beautifully, weaving personal pain and techno-intrigue together in a way that never feels forced.
There were moments when the tone veered just a bit too dramatic for me, like soap opera meets crypto noir. Still, I couldn’t put the book down. The mystery surrounding Luc’s death, the eerie envelope clues, and the idea that someone might be using virgin Bitcoins from the earliest mining days, maybe even Satoshi Nakamoto’s stash, kept me flipping pages late into the night. Pascolo has a knack for balancing tension with curiosity. It’s part grief memoir, part whodunit, part cyberpunk, and somehow, it all clicks.
I’d recommend Zero Knowledge to anyone who loves a thriller with heart. If you’re into tech, crypto, or just enjoy a twisty, emotional ride with a mystery at its core, this is your kind of book. It doesn’t matter if you’ve never heard of blockchain or think Bitcoin is wizard money, the human drama pulls you in, and the cryptographic suspense keeps you there.
Pages: 335 | ASIN : B0F4PPGMZV
Zero Knowledge
Zero Knowledge is a gripping novel that blends human drama with cyber intrigue in the heart of Switzerland’s “Crypto Valley.” It begins with a deeply emotional story about Duan Ripa losing his wife, Mina, to cancer, and shifts into a fast-paced mystery surrounding the sudden death of Luc Starck, a controversial crypto entrepreneur. As the novel unfolds, a diverse cast—from grieving widows to obsessed bloggers—gets entangled in a web of secrets, danger, and betrayal, all orbiting the high-stakes world of cryptocurrency. The backdrop of sleek Swiss towns and the raw emotions of loss, desperation, and ambition are ever-present, driving a story that feels both personal and wildly unpredictable.
Pascolo’s writing is clean and crisp, with a real knack for emotional depth. The way he painted Duan and Mina’s final moments was heartbreakingly real. I found myself needing a break to gather my thoughts. On the flip side, the novel’s pivot into a more thriller-like, corporate conspiracy felt abrupt to me. While the second half is certainly exciting, it sometimes lost the intimacy that made the early chapters so powerful. Still, Pascolo’s portrayal of the fragile, flawed humanity in every character kept me hooked, even when the plot zigzagged faster than I expected.
What really stood out to me was how relatable Pascolo made grief, greed, and hope feel, despite all the high-tech talk of Bitcoin wallets and cyber heists. The dialogue never felt stuffy or overworked, and the characters, even minor ones, popped off the page with quirks and contradictions that felt so real. Pascolo clearly put a lot of thought into explaining the crypto concepts, and while it added depth and realism to the story, it sometimes made me slow down and really absorb the world he was building.
I would wholeheartedly recommend Zero Knowledge to readers who enjoy a mix of emotional storytelling and smart, high-stakes mysteries. If you like novels where love and loss crash headfirst into dark secrets and tech intrigue, this one’s for you. It’s a wild ride, sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes thrilling, but always full of heart. Just make sure you’re ready to have your emotions pulled all over the place.
Pages: 335 | ASIN : B0F4PPGMZV
LITERARY TITAN 