Blog Archives
Changing Norms
Murder Amour follows two private investigators in Los Angeles on their first case as an official investigative team as they try to find a serial killer targeting women from an elite LA escort agency. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
All my stories deal with one or more social issues. The Art of Murder was suicide and addiction. In Murder Amour, I wanted to explore the ramifications of prostitution and changing norms on things like escorting. In the third of this series, homelessness is the topic.
How have John and Kayla evolved since readers first met them in The Art of Murder, and why was it important to explore the challenges of maintaining a romantic relationship while working together professionally?
They began as antagonists, became friends, and then lovers. Kayla represented John’s letting go of his grief in The Art of Murder. In Murder Amour, their relationship solidifies. They use their partnership as a reason or excuse to remain in an open relationship, but the truth is neither has fully committed to the other.
How does the novel explore the difference between physical attraction, emotional intimacy, and genuine commitment?
Escorting is physical attraction and sex without emotional intimacy. Getting thrown into that world affected the emotional intimacy between John and Kayla in a negative way, pushing their willingness to fully commit to one another further away. This is more strongly felt by Kayla than John. We get the feeling that she’s drifting away from him. And she is.
What directions would you like to explore as John and Kayla continue developing their professional and romantic partnership?
The next story in the series also takes place in LA. John and Kayla are drifting apart. To nail the killer, John becomes a homeless victim. In a way, it symbolizes how he feels about Kayla—bereft and impoverished. They remain partners but not romantically after that point.
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To solve their first case as Mathews & Saint Private Investigators, John and Kayla must immerse themselves in the decadent extravagance and deadly deceit of one of the world’s most prestigious escort agencies. The Stellar Agency promises its escorts safety, reward, and empowerment—a huge improvement over the brutal realities of the streets. But beneath the veneer of stunning beauty and seeming innocence lies a dark secret.
A serial killer has been hunting the agency’s elite escorts for years, using its exclusive website to select and stalk his victims. To catch the monster, John and Kayla join the agency’s inner circle, only to discover that its motto, “Beauty You Can Trust,” couldn’t be further from the truth.
Tempted at every turn by the lure of obscene money and ready sex, the trust John and Kayla share begins to fracture, and as the killer closes in on his next victim, they’re faced with a choice—either succumb to the tempting seduction at the cost of their friendship, or channel the strength and respect they share to survive this madness and put an end to the killing once and for all.
This gripping second installment of the Mathews & Saint detective series tackles, with a sharp noir edge, the hidden dangers of a modern escort agency. Perfect for fans of complex, socially relevant crime thrillers.
Knight In Gale: Vengeance
Knight In Gale: Vengeance, by Michael H. Balfour, is a mystery thriller and the third book in the Dante Villehart series. The story follows Dante as he is pulled into a new murder case in Edenvale that carries the signature of the old “Knight In Gale” killings: dead nightingales, literary clues, staged crime scenes, and the uneasy feeling that the past has not stayed buried. What begins as a homicide investigation becomes something more personal, with Dante forced to face old mistakes, fresh danger, and the thin line between justice and vengeance.
I liked how the book leans into the mood of crime fiction without losing sight of Dante as a person. He is not just solving a puzzle. He is tired, haunted, sharp, and sometimes painfully aware of his own limits. That made the investigation feel more grounded to me. The book has the usual pleasures of the genre, including clues, suspects, grim discoveries, and tense confrontations, but its strongest moments often come in quieter scenes: Dante sitting with his guilt, noticing the shape of a room, or finding brief comfort in food, tea, and familiar faces. Those pauses matter. They give the darkness some texture.
Balfour’s writing is vivid and often atmospheric. The prose really wants you to feel the room: the chemical smell of a crime scene, the stale quiet of a diner, the strange theatricality of the killer’s clues. I appreciated that choice because the case itself is built around art, poetry, performance, and obsession, so the heightened style fits the material. This is a story about people turning pain into symbols, and symbols into weapons. The book is candid about how stories can be twisted, especially when murder becomes a spectacle.
I recommend Knight In Gale: Vengeance to readers who enjoy dark mystery thrillers with a literary edge, especially those who like damaged investigators, serial-killer puzzles, and crime stories that care as much about emotional aftermath as they do about the reveal. Fans of character-driven detective fiction will probably get the most from it, particularly if they already know Dante from the earlier books. It’s tense, moody, and reflective, with enough bite to satisfy genre readers and enough introspection to make the case feel personal.
Pages: 353 | ASIN : B0GD94F5Z3
Bitter-Sweet Tastes of Revenge
In Bitter-Sweet Tastes of Revenge, Donald Michael Platt builds a sprawling revenge thriller around two wounded men: Max Calderon, a San Francisco homicide detective trying to step away from the wreckage of police work, and Barry Wilk, an older cousin whose grief has calcified into something colder and more lethal. The novel moves between 1990s San Francisco, Florida, Berkeley memories from 1949–1950, and the long aftershocks of betrayals first committed in youth. What begins as a brutal family massacre becomes a layered investigation into old fraternity alliances, ruined romances, class resentment, and the terrible arithmetic by which one man decides that ancient injuries still demand blood.
Platt doesn’t treat the past as background; he makes it an active predator. Old dances, sorority houses, cashmere sweaters, cigarette habits, family nicknames, and college rituals all return with prosecutorial force. The result is sometimes luxuriant, sometimes claustrophobic, but rarely thin. I admired how the novel lets nostalgia curdle. A place like Capitola or Berkeley is not merely scenic; it is evidence, a preserved room where the emotional fingerprints never quite fade.
This isn’t a soft-focus mystery in which cleverness tidies up pain. The violence is ugly, the grievances are obsessive, and the characters often speak with hard-edged certainty about love, ethnicity, class, sex, family, and justice. That bluntness can feel abrasive, but it also gives the novel a unique feel. I found myself less interested in “who did it” than in the more disquieting question the book keeps pressing: how long can a person keep feeding a wound before the wound begins feeding on everyone else?
The target audience is readers who enjoy revenge thrillers, crime fiction, psychological suspense, serial-killer mysteries, and family-saga crime dramas with a strong historical undertow. Readers of Thomas Harris may recognize the fascination with meticulous violence and corrupted intelligence, while fans of James Ellroy may appreciate the dense social texture and rancid glamour beneath the California surface. Bitter-Sweet Tastes of Revenge is a harsh, memory-soaked novel about love curdled into vengeance.
Pages: 330 | ASIN : B0GT61ZXG1
In His Image
I went into In His Image expecting a dark crime novel with religious overtones; what I found was something more unnerving and intimate. The book follows Louis Fontenot, a criminal profiler in New Orleans whose obsession with understanding killers evolves into an unthinkable act of creation. As a serial murderer stalks the city, Louis crosses ethical and scientific lines, attempting to manufacture the “perfect killer” by merging DNA, memory, and will. The story unfolds as a first-person descent, part police procedural, part theological horror, where the line between investigator, creator, and monster erodes chapter by chapter.
Louis is precise, controlled, and chillingly self-aware, and that interiority makes the novel work. The prose lingers on heat, sweat, ritual, and routine, grounding the more extreme ideas in sensory realism. New Orleans isn’t just a backdrop; it breathes, rots, sings jazz, and watches. I was drawn into Louis’s rationalizations even as they curdled. The authors resist easy moral signposts, which made the experience more unsettling than a conventional thriller. I didn’t always like Louis, but I believed him, and that belief carried me forward.
The second half of the novel leans hard into body horror and existential dread, and while it occasionally risks excess, I admired the commitment. The Frankenstein epigraph is not subtle, but it’s earned. This is a book fascinated by creation without responsibility, by intelligence divorced from empathy, and by the seductive lie that understanding evil grants control over it. Some scenes made me uncomfortable, not because they were gratuitous, but because they were coldly logical. The horror here isn’t chaos; it’s intention.
In His Image will appeal most to readers of psychological horror, crime fiction, and science-fiction horror, especially those who enjoy moral ambiguity and slow-burn dread. Fans of Frankenstein or Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation will recognize the same obsession with creation and consequence, though this novel wears a sharper procedural edge. A cold-blooded blend of crime and creation, In His Image asks what happens when the need to understand evil becomes indistinguishable from the urge to make it.
Pages: 327 | ASIN : B0FXVV5S3X
Reservations: A Samantha Wright Crime Series
Reservations follows FBI profiler Samantha Wright as she’s pushed back into the hunt for a serial killer after the sudden death of her mentor and closest friend, Dr. Edmond Sampson. The story opens with grief, then moves fast into danger as Sam takes over the RESERVATIONS case, a string of murders involving young boys on reservations across the American West. Her past traumas, messy romantic entanglement with Special Agent Charlie Falken, and deep loyalty to Dr. Sampson color every choice she makes. The book blends crime, trauma, culture, and romance in a way that feels raw and intimate, almost like sitting beside Sam as she thinks her way through every dark corner of the investigation.
I liked how emotional the writing feels. The author doesn’t rush through Sam’s pain. She lets it sit there, real and jagged. Sam grieves her mentor with this quiet, private sorrow that feels heavy and familiar. At the same time, the pacing snaps between slow internal moments and sudden shocks. The memories of the BAKER’S DOZEN case are especially rough. The writing keeps things personal. It doesn’t pretend Sam is made of steel. She’s brilliant, but she’s tired, haunted, and sometimes unsure, and I liked her more because of that.
The mix of genres also surprised me in a good way. The romantic scenes with Charlie are blunt, sweaty, flawed, and full of emotional landmines. They’re not polished or dreamy. They feel like two people clinging to each other because they don’t know what else to do with their hurt. Then the story swings into investigative mode with sharp detail and a steady buildup of dread. The casework feels grounded and tense, especially when Sam revisits crime scenes or pieces together old trauma with new evidence. The writing is vivid.
I’d recommend Reservations to readers who enjoy crime fiction with strong emotional depth and a protagonist who feels human in all the best and hardest ways. It’s especially fitting for people who like stories that dive into trauma, culture, identity, and the complicated ties we form with the people who shape us. If you want a thriller with heart and heat, something that grips you and makes you feel a little raw by the end, this book will get you there.
Pages: 332 | ASIN : B0FHYLFVBZ
The 12th Cleansing: A Cold Case Reignited by a Serial Killer’s Return
The 12th Cleansing follows Detective Walker Michaels as the nightmare he thought had ended, suddenly returns. A serial killer known as the Moralist resumes his ritualistic murders after a four-year silence, forcing Michaels to confront old failures, grieving families, and the unraveling lives of those caught in the killer’s moral crusade. The story moves between investigators, victims’ families, and the killer’s perspective, building a tense, layered thriller that keeps tightening as new secrets surface.
This was an absolutely gripping read. The writing feels clean and fast, and the shifting viewpoints land with weight. I found myself sinking into the Rawlings family scenes. The way the parents break down, the strain between husband and wife, and the quiet shock of their son Connor all hit hard. Those moments felt honest in a way that surprised me. I caught myself getting frustrated with the detectives when they stumbled and then suddenly rooting for them again when a new clue clicked into place.
I also found myself torn about the ideas behind the story. The book pushes into heavy themes, especially around judgment, morality, and grief. At times, it made me uncomfortable, but in a way that felt intentional. The villain’s twisted logic is disturbing, and the author lets that discomfort sit with you. I liked how the characters wrestle with their own blame and doubts. It made the story feel more human, not just a chase after a monster. And I’ll admit I got pretty worked up during a few scenes. Some had me whispering little reactions under my breath. Others made me pause for a second, thinking about how thin the line is between control and collapse.
In some ways, The 12th Cleansing feels like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, since both blend dark mysteries with messy family secrets and investigators who carry their own scars, yet Glass’s story hits closer to home with its raw focus on grief and moral tension. I’d recommend The 12th Cleansing to readers who enjoy crime thrillers that mix emotional tension with a slow-burn mystery. If you like stories that dig into family strain, moral conflict, and the ripple effects of violence, this one is absolutely worth the read.
Pages: 404 | ASIN : B0FY6F4YM1
DARKER THAN BLOOD (The Psychic Thriller Experience)
Taylor Marsh’s Darker Than Blood is a psychological and spiritual thriller that threads together trauma, intuition, and the battle between light and dark energy. It follows Gaynell Debs, a brilliant but fractured psychic researcher who investigates crimes through energetic and spiritual phenomena while confronting her own buried past. The story moves between philosophical musings on the soul and gripping scenes of investigation, murder, and mysticism. It’s part psychological study, part metaphysical manifesto, and part crime story, all wrapped in a stream of intense emotion and strange beauty.
The writing is poetic, rhythmic, almost hypnotic at times. Marsh writes with conviction, though her style can be dense, full of spiritual theories and raw inner dialogue. Still, I couldn’t look away. Gaynell’s voice is sharp, vulnerable, and maddeningly honest. I found myself torn between skepticism and belief, between wanting to shake her and wanting to protect her. The blend of astrology, psychology, and metaphysics is bold, and even when I didn’t buy every claim, I admired the audacity of it all. The emotional tension is constant, and that’s what makes it compelling, there’s never a dull page, just moments that leave you unsettled and curious.
At times, the prose teeters on the edge of chaos, but that’s part of the charm. Marsh writes like she’s chasing truth. I felt that too, reading it. The story jumps from intimate confessions to philosophical revelations, and I loved the unpredictability. The dialogue is raw and relatable, especially between Gaynell and Nun. There’s a deep current of loneliness running beneath the mysticism, and it hit me harder than I expected. The ideas about trauma, energy, and emotional alchemy are strange but oddly comforting. It’s a book that feels alive, pulsing with the author’s own search for meaning.
Darker Than Blood is a rewarding read. It’s for readers who crave intensity and don’t mind getting lost in spiritual terrain that feels dangerous and divine. I’d recommend it to anyone who loves fiction that questions reality, faith, and the limits of human understanding. Reading Darker Than Blood felt to me like stepping into the same haunted, cerebral space as The Secret History by Donna Tartt, but with a far more mystical, electric pulse running through every page.
Pages: 311 | ASIN : B0F79GQWHX
Mind The Blinds
Mind the Blinds follows Elyas, a seventeen-year-old boy living in Nigeria, who struggles with alexithymia and antisocial personality disorder while navigating a life marked by family violence, peer pressure, and dangerous encounters. What begins as a portrait of a boy hardened by neglect and abuse quickly turns into a tense psychological thriller. Elyas gets pulled deeper into violence, secrecy, and survival, while detectives and other students circle closer to the truth. The story balances the harsh realities of growing up in a fractured home with the moral and emotional weight of choices that can never be undone.
I found the writing bold and unflinching. It didn’t shy away from difficult moments, whether it was domestic abuse, corruption, or the chilling matter-of-factness with which Elyas recounts his killings. At times, I felt unsettled, almost claustrophobic, because the story is told in a way that makes you live inside his head. The raw honesty of his voice made me both want to recoil and lean in closer. It’s rare to see a book explore a young narrator with such a cold lens and still leave space for flashes of vulnerability, especially in his care for his younger brother.
Long descriptions of school life, conversations, and side characters slowed down the story as the tension was building. Still, those slower parts gave the book a certain rhythm, like a calm before the storm, and when the violence returned, it felt even more jarring. The contrast worked.
By the time I closed the book, I felt both rattled and impressed. It’s not a story that leaves you with peace of mind, but that’s the point. Mind the Blinds is best for readers who like dark psychological fiction, stories that question morality, and books that sit with you long after you’re done. If you’re willing to be disturbed, challenged, and even a little haunted, it’s well worth the read.
Pages: 264 | ASIN : B0DK6MVGG7
