Dead Cold Mysteries Books

Detective John Stone of the NYPD has the best arrest record in the 43rd precinct. But he’s a dinosaur who belongs to another age. Detective Carmen Dehan has such a bad attitude that nobody at the precinct can stomach her. Captain Jennifer Cuevas wants them both out of the way and thinks they make a perfect pair. So she gives them the Cold Cases file – the cases nobody gives a damn about. She has no idea just how hot a cold case can get. Ten years back Nelson Hernandez and his four cousins were playing poker in a dive at Hunts Point. Somebody came in, blew them away and beheaded and castrated Nelson, leaving his head and his balls on the table. There was no shortage of suspects, the Jersey Mob, the Triads from Manhattan, or the 43rds own bent cop, Mick Harragan. But nobody was ever charged, and the night of the murder Mick Harragan went missing with Nelson’s wife, Maria. Now Stone and Dehan plan to find him – whatever the consequences…

It was November in New York. It was raining, it was cold and the trees all looked like skeleton’s hands. And Detective John Stone was having a problem with habeas corpus, because all there was of the body, was two bare arms. Two bare arms that somebody, twelve years ago, had put in a lock up in the East Bronx. What they had done with the rest of the woman, nobody knew. But as Stone and Dehan start to investigate, two things become clear: whoever killed the woman, wanted her arms to be found, as a boast, as a challenge. And that meant they were dealing with a psychopath – a serial killer. But who –the biker with a taste for beating up women? Or his best pal the Satanist and devotee of Crowley? Or perhaps the neurotic IT freak who spent his leisure hours surfing the net for porn? Or maybe somebody else…? One thing Stone understands clearly, whoever it is, is a master of misdirection…

When the body of a tramp was found in a dumpster on Lafayette and Bryant in the Bronx, with no papers and no ID, the case was filed as unsolved – another victim nobody cared about, shot by some punk nobody cared about. That was twelve years ago. Then Detective Stone notices that the ‘tramp’ had a hundred dollar haircut and manicured nails. That makes him curious. He wants to know, who dresses a murder victim up as a tramp, then leaves them in full view in a dumpster? But the answers he gets are not the ones he expects, and before long their investigation leads Stone and Dehan to St Mary’s Roman Catholic Church, and the darkest recesses of the human soul. It also leads them to some of the most powerful men in New York. Some, like Conor Hagan, head of the Irish Mob, are known criminals. But others are not… Stone’s problem is deciding which of them are just criminals, and which are truly evil. That is, until ghosts start appearing from Dehan’s past. Then things get complicated…

It seemed to be a cold case like any other. So much so that Stone and Dehan hadn’t even considered reviewing it – until private investigator Karl Baxter requested a copy of the police file. Then Stone got curious. Why did a second rate PI in the Bronx want to look into the case of a low life petty criminal found tied to a chair in his apartment, beaten and shot through the heart? And that question led to other questions, like, whose was second pool of blood on the floor? If there was a second victim, where was the body? Unfortunately, a chat with Baxter only raises more questions that threaten to drive Stone crazy: who is the mysterious Tamara Gunthersen? And what was the gig she did for the even more mysterious Geronimo dos Santos, back in 2015? At every turn the questions get deeper, and the women more tempting - and more dangerous. Until the strain on Stone and Dehan’s partnership threatens to make it snap. Then Stone will be on his own…

Where sex and religion mix, nothing is ever simple... USA TODAY & Amazon 2-million copy bestselling author BLAKE BANNER is at his best in this mystifying crime series! When Silvie Martin moves to New York from Texas with her husband, Simon, and their one year-old daughter, Mary, she is filled with the joy and hope she derives from their shared faith. But no sooner have they moved into their new home, which backs on to their church, than her husband is brutally murdered before her very eyes. The only trouble is, the shock has completely erased her memory… Now, eighteen years later, Detectives Stone and Dehan have to piece together a crime where their prime witness remembers nothing, and the suspects are as bizarre as they are unlikely: Reverend Paul Truelove, bombastic and irresistible to women, Humberto, the mysterious, shambling freak who speaks a language only he understands, El Chato, the Mexican housebreaker, and even Sylvie herself… But Stone and Dehan know, where sex and religion mix, nothing is ever simple. And the deeper they investigate, the more convinced they are, there is something they are not seeing…

There is nothing unusual about a young Catholic girl from the Bronx winding up raped, beaten, strangled and decapitated – unless she winds up that way in Lefthand Canyon, in the Colorado Rockies, where there hasn’t been a murder since 1922. Then it’s unusual enough to become a problem for the sheriff of Lee County. And when he finds no blood at the scene and no physical evidence, it becomes more than a problem. It becomes a headache – for five long years. That’s when he bats it back to the Bronx, to the 43rd precinct and right onto Detectives Stone and Dehan’s desk. Let them deal with it. But Lee County is one of the remotest parts of the USA, and Stone finds his pool of suspects limited, to say the least. Was it Greg, the tough, plain-talking rancher? Was it Ingrid and Alfredo, the bitter, puritanical in-laws? Or somebody in the off-grid, dope farming community at the Shack? Or was it somebody else, somebody completely different…?

Dave Thorndike, an investigative reporter on the New York Telegraph, is in the habit of disappearing for weeks at a time. So when he vanishes in the winter of 2008, investigating the story of his life, nobody worries – until he shows up shot in the head with his own 9mm - no laptop and no story. It wasn’t much to go on in 2008, but when Stone and Dehan pick it up ten years later, the case is as cold as the icy winds blowing off the East River. Both his wife and his mistress had motive, but the killing has all the hallmarks of an execution. Things get deep when Dehan realizes Thorndike’s investigation was into non other than Senator Carol Hennessy, head of the Hennessy Foundation and presidential candidate - a woman whose opponents tended to die young. But that’s not the only thing she notices. She also sees Shelly Pierce, the sexy new editor of the NY Telegraph, coming on to Stone. A fact to which Stone seems totally blind…

It was not a cold case. Or was it…? Sebastian Acosta has been gunned down at three AM on a Saturday morning, sitting behind the wheel of a beaten up Toyota. The passenger door is open and a few paces away his pal, Luis Irizarry, lies with his life ebbing away through two gunshot wound in his chest. It should be a red hot case, except that fifteen years earlier, Rosario Rojas was raped and strangled in that self same house, the house Luis was crawling toward, the house that belonged to Angela Rojas, Rosario’s daughter. Rosario, who was like a sister to Marta Flores, Detective Dehan’s mother. Things get more complicated when it emerges that Rosario had started to get involved in a set whose morals Marta had considered a little too lax, a bit too broad-minded; when it emerges that the two boys who just got shot are the sons of two of the couples that made up that set. But then it turns out, this is just the tip of the iceberg, in this old, cold case…

The X-Files, after all, exist only in fiction... USA TODAY & Amazon 2-million copy bestselling author BLAKE BANNER is at his best in this mystifying crime series! It wasn’t just the twenty years since Danny Brown’s death that made it the hardest case of their careers: it was that the manner of his death was, quite simply, impossible. His body was reduced to ash from his neck to his ankles, in the middle of Soundview Park. His unburned feet were still in his flip-flops. His unburned head was just eighteen inches away, where it had apparently rolled; and his genitals were too were unburned. To make matters worse, though it had rained the night before, there were no footprints to be found - anywhere. Detective Stone keeps an open mind, but his partner, Detective Dehan, is convinced there is a logical, terrestrial explanation for the gruesome murder. The X-Files, after all, exist only in fiction, don’t they? Then they start to hear about the lights in the sky that night, and the threatening visits the FBI paid to the witnesses that saw them – and Detective Dehan starts to wonder: how was Danny Brown killed – and above all, by whom…? This is a cold case Dehan and Stone might never solve…

Some mistakes aren't forgivable... USA TODAY & Amazon 2-million copy bestselling author BLAKE BANNER is at his best in this mystifying crime series! When Wayne Harris contacts Detectives Stone and Dehan, of the 43rd Precinct’s cold case unit, and tells them he has information relating to the Westchester Angel murder two years earlier, they agree to go and see him – at Rikers Island. It soon becomes clear that Wayne has genuine information about the murder, information he could only have if he had been there. But it is also clear that Wayne is not giving anything away for free. Wayne wants something in return. He wants his liberty. Stone believes Wayne Harris belongs where he is, behind bars, but as he and Dehan begin to look into the case they soon realize the horrific truth: they are dealing with a psychopathic serial killer who will stop at nothing to sate his lust for blood. And the only clue they have to his identity lies with Wayne Harris. Yet, doing a deal with him, may be the worst mistake of their careers…

A honeymoon. A remote island. And Murder... USA TODAY & Amazon 2-million copy bestselling author BLAKE BANNER is at his best in this mystifying crime series! When detectives John Stone and Carmen Dehan who run the Cold Cases Department at the 43rd Precinct in the Bronx choose their honeymoon together, there are three things they are very clear on: there must be good steak and whisky, it must be remote, and for two blissful weeks they must forget about work, about cold cases and about murder. So a small island off the north coast of Scotland in a 16th century castle seems to be just the job. After all, two out of three isn’t bad. At first the place seems idyllic: The wild landscapes are breathtaking, the northern lights otherworldly and the fire-side talk, fuelled by good whisky and good Angus steak, is fascinating. Maybe a bit too fascinating when it leads to a forty year old mystery about a man murdered, shot with a .38 in a locked room in circumstances which are, quite simply, impossible. And when the island is cut off by a storm, and an identical murder is committed, well, what are two cold case cops on honeymoon to do…?

The one that got away... USA TODAY & Amazon 2-million copy bestselling author BLAKE BANNER is at his best in this mystifying crime series! It was the first time John Stone had been back to London for fifteen years. Last time had been on an exchange program between the NYPD and Scotland Yard: an exchange of skills and experience that was supposed to last six months, but went one for a year and a half. This time he was on honeymoon with his partner and wife, Carmen Dehan. And it seemed, as they prepared to return home, that history was repeating itself. Because, as they were leaving the hotel for the airport, the call came; the call that said they had to stay, the call that said the killer was back, the one he’d been searching for fifteen years ago, the one who haunted all his secret nightmares - the one that got away. So now he has to share his dark secrets, and his nightmares, with his new bride. And as the horror that he thought he’d laid to rest, rises up again, the question that haunts him is, will Dehan survive the ordeal?

USA TODAY & Amazon 2-million copy bestselling author BLAKE BANNER is at his best in this mystifying crime series! An eighteen-year-old girl sets out one November night to walk five blocks down Gleason Avenue to her boyfriend’s house. He calls her and she tells him she’s on her way. It’s a walk that should take ten minutes, but she never arrives. When she does turn up, it’s five days later, washed up on the banks of the River Bronx, in Soundview Park, strangled to death. The detective who investigates the murder, a friend of the family, finds no forensic evidence, nothing of interest in her phone records, no witnesses to the abduction or the murder. Nothing. The case goes cold. Until her brother, Samuel, comes forward with new evidence he has found. And then the cases is handed to Detectives Stone and Dehan of the 43rd Precinct. They start asking the difficult questions, like how did she get into the river in the first place, and then the case starts heating up again…

It was a hell of a trick... USA TODAY & Amazon 2-million copy bestselling author BLAKE BANNER is at his best in this mystifying crime series! Sue Benedict wasn’t giving out treats, so she got the trick. It was a hell of a trick. She was raped and murdered in her apartment after attending a Halloween party with a bunch of art students. The killer did not use a condom or gloves, the CSI team got a perfect DNA profile and two perfect thumbprints from her throat, a witness saw her admit the killer to her apartment at two-thirty AM that night. It should have been a slam dunk. The only problem was, the DNA profile and the thumb prints didn’t match anyone on CODIS or IAFIS, or anyone at the party. The killer, who made no effort to hide his identity, had vanished without a trace – just like the one witness who might actually have known what happened that night. And twelve years later the case is as cold as Sue Benedict, and the icy December wind coming in off the East River. So cold in fact that Detective Dehan of the NYPD thinks this may be the one case she and her partner, Detective Stone, will never crack. A hell of a trick.

The weather was freezing, but the case wasn’t cold... USA TODAY & Amazon 2-million copy bestselling author BLAKE BANNER is at his best in this mystifying crime series! The weather was freezing, but the case wasn’t cold, it was too hot. It looked open and shut: Dr Agnes Shine had shot Dr Jose Robles eight times with a Sig Sauer Tacops p226, while they were drinking Californian wine in her living room; then she’d disappeared. But Assistant DA Costas Varufakis didn’t like it and he was leaning on Deputy Inspector John Newman of the 43rd Precinct to have somebody look a bit deeper. That somebody was Detectives John Stone, and his partner Carmen Dehan. And when they started to look, everything looked wrong: the motive was wrong, the weapon was wrong, the location was wrong – even Assistant DA Varufakis was wrong. But when they discover the nature of Robles’ relationship with Dr Alicia Cobos, and when the forensic team discover Robles’ deleted Telegram app, thing go from wrong to very, very dark. Yet the two question on Stone’s mind are: Is it all smoke and mirrors? And where is Dr Agnes Shine?

It was a real Jack in the box. USA TODAY & Amazon 2-million copy bestselling author BLAKE BANNER is at his best in this mystifying crime series! Only this box was a UPS delivery to crime novelist Helena Magnusson, and the Jack was Jack Connors – her husband; or at least his head. The rest of him was probably in the East River somewhere. When Detectives Stone and Dehan of the 43rd Precinct reopen the case it isn’t just cold - with no forensic evidence and no witnesses, it’s nigh impossible to solve - and in an investigation that takes them from the Bronx, through Connecticut, right up to Malone on the Canadian border, the cold case team’s list of suspects only seems to grow longer: Is it Connors’ lover, the mysterious Penelope Peach? Or her jilted lover, ruthless South African arms dealer, Grant Shaw? Or is it Helena’s creative writing student, Lenny dos Santos, now doing time for murder? Or is it none of them? But in this cold case, these questions are just the tip of the iceberg. Detective Dehan will discover that for her, the box holds a darker, more terrible revelation than she could possibly imagine…

The scene is brutal as it is precise... USA TODAY & Amazon 2-million copy bestselling author BLAKE BANNER is at his best in this mystifying crime series! When Karl and Christen Redfern were brutally murdered in their apartment in the Bronx, a lot of things were never explained, like why he was stabbed only twice, with clinical precision, but she was stabbed twenty times in the heart, in a crazed frenzy; like what happened to their Chevy Impala, and why Christen’s sister, Ingrid, had never reported it missing. But the biggest mystery of all was perhaps where Karl and Christen’s daughter Amy had disappeared to, along with her boyfriend, Charlie, on the very night of her parents’ murder. These were the questions Detective Carmen Dehan of the 43rd Precinct had been asking herself for the past six years. But when she persuaded her partner, Detective John Stone, to take this as their next cold case, he was anything but prepared for the passion with which she would then pursue that investigation – an investigation that would take them from the Bronx to Iowa, and then Arizona and the Mexican border, an investigation with layers of dark secrets that would ultimately bring them face to face with Sinaloa’s most ruthless Sicario, and test their relationship to the very limit.

It should have been a slam-dunk...but they were missing one little thing... USA TODAY & Amazon 2-million copy bestselling author BLAKE BANNER is at his best in this mystifying crime series! Detective John Stone of the NYPD heads up the 43rd’s cold case unit, in the Bronx. In a place like the Bronx you get a lot of cold cases. So Stone has one golden rule for investigating a case: it must have some remote chance of being solved. So what made him choose the Al’ Chester case, the sixty year-old schizophrenic murdered on his birthday, twelve years earlier, alone in his apartment - a case where there was zero forensic evidence? The fact was, it should have been a slam-dunk. They had the time of death - ten thirty on the Friday night; cause of death - a single stab wound to the heart; motive - half a million bucks; prime suspect – a gang member seen on the night of the murder trying to break into the victim’s house...only one thing was missing. Proof. The complete absence of any forensic evidence meant that somebody would be getting away with murder, unless Stone and Dehan could uncover the truth. But in this apparently insoluble case, the truth might turn out to be a lot darker than they expected.

...so who killed Debbie Smith? USA TODAY & Amazon 2-million copy bestselling author BLAKE BANNER is at his best in this mystifying crime series! There hadn’t been a crime in Dexter, upstate New York, since 1865. It was a long time coming, but when it came, on the 21st September, 2012, it was ugly. It was murder. It was the murder of a seventeen year-old girl, beaten, raped and strangled, then stabbed in the heart with a hunting knife. The DNA recovered from the corpse was contaminated and corrupted, but the DNA recovered from her clothes at home was clear. It was her stepfather’s, just like the fingerprints on her arms and her face where she had been beaten. It should heave been an open and shut case, but there was a problem. When seventeen year-old Debbie was being murdered, her step father was drinking beer with the deputy. So who killed Debbie Smith? Seven years after the murder, the sheriff of Franklin County wants an answer. And he’s heard that the 43rd in the Bronx has a team who specialize in cracking cold cases. But as the fall sets in in upstate new York, this case may be just too cold to crack. Or too hot…

The cops at the 43rd called it the unsolvable case. USA TODAY & Amazon 2-million copy bestselling author BLAKE BANNER is at his best in this mystifying crime series! October, 2010, Sally Jones had been stabbed in the heart in her apartment on Commonwealth Avenue, in the Bronx. Her coat was on the back of her chair. Her shoes were beside her bed, her clothes were neatly folded, and she was dead under the sheets. The killer had removed Sally’s hands and feet and departed, leaving no trace - except the dismembered body. October, 2019, as the national media focuses on the 43rd’s unbroken record in cold cases, Detective John Stone, head the unit, decides to tackle the case. But he and Dehan are soon to discover that this is a case like no other: who were the visitors who came to see her before her death? What was their connection with the shadowy Sacred Brotherhood of Christ? And did her brother, Captain Ewan Jones, seek to help her - or murder her? It soon begins to look like this is indeed the case they will never crack. And what, Dehan wants to know, happened to the Mustang?

Statistically people don’t get murdered on Christmas day... USA TODAY & Amazon 2-million copy bestselling author BLAKE BANNER is at his best in this mystifying crime series! Lilith Jones was a statistical anomaly. Her mother found her face down on the frozen sidewalk, by the light of the single streetlamp on Pugsley Avenue, with her neighbor’s scissors stuck in her back. The scissors belonged to her neighbor, and so did all the fingerprints on them. Her neighbor, Pat Perkins, hated Lilith. She hated her because her own husband, her brother and her daughter all loved Lilith. Lilith was charming, beautiful, smart and adorable. Now she was dead, too. But Pat, who was unlovable, ugly and stupid, had vanished without a trace, taking her Toyota RAV4 with her. BOLOs were issued nation wide, her financials were checked and rechecked, her phone was tapped, but it was like she had vanished off the face f the Earth. When Stone and Dehan take the case, it’s a mystery, but the deeper they dig the more impenetrable it becomes, until they find Pat’s lover, Bobby Hansen. Then the terrible truth begins to emerge…

Mommy’s Boy had not killed for five years... USA TODAY & Amazon 2-million copy bestselling author BLAKE BANNER is at his best in this mystifying crime series! Mommy’s Boy had not killed for five years. Detective Alvarez of the 43rd in the Bronx had lined up his suspects, but each of them had a more or less credible alibi and he was nowhere close to solving the case. Then the killings had stopped and the case went cold… Then, five years later, he killed again. And this time the chief wants him caught and dealt with-for good. So he calls in Stone and Dehan. This is one cold case which is hot and live. Because the clock is ticking and time is running out for the next girl who is going to be butchered. But as they start to review Alvarez’ suspects, in particular Nelson Vargas of the Chupacabras gang, and the charismatic leader of the Church of Final Days, James Campbell, they begin to realize that Alvarez had overlooked one crucial possibility. A possibility that was going to cost lives… And then Dehan made a discovery. A discovery that would change everything, forever…

Sometimes a coincidence is just a coincidence...or is it? USA TODAY & Amazon 2-million copy bestselling author BLAKE BANNER is at his best in this mystifying crime series! The Cold Cases team at the 43rd Precinct in the Bronx tend to focus on homicides. But now, Detective John Stone, head of the team, is curious about a two year-old rape case. A rape case where Sadie Byrne got HIV, turned out to be a rapid progressor and died of AIDS within a year. She never named her attacker. In New York law that did not constitute homicide. What did constitute homicide was what happened to Chuck Inglewood, when somebody slipped into his house and, with a razor sharp blade, cut through the veins and the arteries in his underarms and his inner thighs, and left him to bleed to death. Why he was murdered was a mystery nobody could solve. Why he didn’t fight back was a deeper mystery. Nothing connected the two cases, except for the simple fact that Chuck Inglewood was Sadie Byrne’s uncle. A coincidence? Detectives Stone and Dehan think not, but not even they are prepared for the dark web of deceit, betrayal and murder they were about to unravel…

A woman shot, and a mummified corpse. What do these things have in common? USA TODAY & Amazon 2-million copy bestselling author BLAKE BANNER is at his best in this mystifying crime series! The neighbor called it in because the house next door, normally empty and silent, at two AM was a blaze of light, with people shouting and car doors slamming, like gunshots in the night. Until he heard two reports that echoed down the dark, silent street and spoke of death, two reports that were not slamming doors, but gunshots. That was when he called it in. What the cops found at the scene was a house with the doors open and all the lights on, and the body of April Olsen lying on the floor of the cellar with two gunshot wounds in her chest. But the weird thing was what they found beside her: a hole in the concrete, six foot long and three foot wide, and inside it the mummified body of a man who’d died thirty-five years earlier, shot twice in the chest with the same gun that had just killed April Olsen. Was it the controversial Professor Allen Bernstein? Or was it somebody Bernstein had killed before he fled to Mexico? Either way, it was now a cold case. A case for Stone and Dehan.

A passion that led to hot-blooded murder... USA TODAY & Amazon 2-million copy bestselling author BLAKE BANNER is at his best in this mystifying crime series! All married couples should have interests outside the marriage. It’s a truism, a maxim, a golden rule. It’s also a recipe for disaster, if that interest turns to passion, not for what your doing, but who you’re doing it with. Detective John Stone had a marriage made in heaven. His wife was young, beautiful and smart, and she was his partner in the Cold Cases unit at the 43rd. They were tight, close, and practically telepathic. At least, that was what he’d always thought - until she got an interest outside their marriage, and that interest became a passion. It was a passion for a youth club, a passion to help young kids escape the gangs and the crime of the Bronx. It was a passion that was keeping her away from home late into the night, week after week - a passion she shared with Sergeant Tony Sanchez of the 45th. A passion that had a hot coal burning in John Stone’s belly, as he dined alone at home for the third month in a row. A passion that led to hot-blooded murder, with Dehan set squarely in the frame.

...do you want to play a game? USA TODAY & Amazon 2-million copy bestselling author BLAKE BANNER is at his best in this mystifying crime series! There are a lot of things you really don’t want to find when you’re a homicide detective in the Bronx. High on the list is a new serial killer. Serial killers are real bad news because they kill without motive, so they are hard to trace and they can take years to catch. But even worse than a new serial killer, is a new kind of serial killer: one who murders with a motive, but a motive so unfathomable nobody can understand it; a motive that makes his choice of victims incomprehensible and unpredictable, a motive that leads to each victim being killed in a particularly cruel and unusual way. One thing – and one thing only – connects each of these awful crimes, and that’s that each victim is made to die slowly, reflecting on the way they have lived, listening to some piece of ancient, sacred music. When the case finally reaches Detectives Stone and Dehan at the 43rd it is already six years old, and no closer to being solved than it was when the first victim died. To Stone it seems there is a sinister and intelligent hand at work – the hand of a fallen angel.

Two crime scenes. Two multiple murders. USA TODAY & Amazon 2-million copy bestselling author BLAKE BANNER is at his best in this mystifying crime series! Two multiple murders that had too much in common to be mere coincidence. Cherise Brown, her small daughter Shevron, her husband Earl. The only survivor, eight year-old Leroy who witnessed the whole thing. His story, that his father broke his sister’s neck, his mother stabbed his father in the back and his dad, before dying, in a kind of berserker rage, took the knife and killed his mother. Four years later Leroy Brown is murdered along with his adoptive sister, Lea. He is stabbed in the back, while his sister’s throat is cut, in a tool shed in the back yard of his adoptive family. The only survivor, his adoptive brother, Marcus Mitchell, now trapped in a catatonic depression, unable to move or speak, unable to tell anybody his story. When the mysterious Sonia Laplant brings new evidence, and Stone and Dehan begin to investigate, they soon discover that not only are the two murders intimately linked, they are impossible to explain. Because the killer simply could not have been there…

It should have been an open and shut case... USA TODAY & Amazon 2-million copy bestselling author BLAKE BANNER is at his best in this mystifying crime series! At forty-something, Bob Walklet was about to make a fortune with his IT company. But he’d made the mistake of falling in love with his assistant, twenty-something Sorka Williams. They were crazy about each other, and Bob had told his wife, Sheila - a thirty-something, ex-cop insurance consultant. He wanted a divorce. And there was a prenup’. When he was found in his bedroom, stabbed in the heart, her DNA was literally all over him, her prints were on the knife and a neighbor had seen her hurrying from the house at the time of death. Not only that, his death saved her from the prenup’, and she cleaned up on the insurance. Open and shut. Except for the small matter that over two hundred guests, including her friend the Boston Police Commissioner, had all seen her deliver a speech at a conference two hundred miles away, right at the time Bob was killed. So the question Detectives Stone and Dehan are asking is, how can a killer be in two places at the same time?

Stone and Dehan are back! USA TODAY & Amazon 2-million copy bestselling author BLAKE BANNER is at his best in this mystifying crime series! And so is the Castle Hill Ripper. His MO hasn’t changed. He still stalks pregnant women, like a hunter. He still gets himself invited into their homes and he still disembowels them in their living rooms and then takes a shower and changes his clothes before leaving. And he is still cold, like a man with a frozen heart and no soul. The only people who knew about the showers and the change of clothes were the cops investigating the killings, and the killer himself. But Dave Clerk, convicted and sentenced for life for the murders is at Attica maximum security, doing his time. Which means whoever just killed Elaine Gallardo is either a cop who was involved in the original investigation, or a copycat who knows Clerk intimately. Either that or the original conviction was wrong, and the Castle Hill Ripper is still at large, hunting again. Stone and Dehan know they need to find out fast. What they don’t know is that this investigation might just cost them their lives.

GET READY FOR THE CURTAIN CALL... USA TODAY & Amazon 2-million copy bestselling author BLAKE BANNER is at his best in this mystifying crime series! Detective John Stone is taking early retirement. He has informed the chief, Inspector John Newman; and his partner and wife, Carmen Dehan, is retiring with him. She is pregnant and both Stone and Dehan want a safe, secure environment for their future child. Their sights are set on New England, where Stone will write his memoirs. So the last thing either of them expects is a curtain call from one of Stone’s old flames. Yet that is exactly what happens when actress Jane Morley, wife of Dan Santos, known collectively as America’s Sweethearts, shows up and asks Stone to investigate a very particular cold case – the brutal murder of her friend and personal assistant, Kate Hagan ten years earlier. At the time Stone had refused to investigate because he had recently been personally involved with the actress. Now he can’t refuse, but as the case unfolds and its dark shadows threaten to engulf his marriage and his future family, he will wish fervently that he could. But he know beyond doubt that all he can do is see it through to the bitter, twisted end.