Geri LaRue Books

It's a newspaper mantra—the most gruesome stories always run on the front page to get people's attention. But when Corina Vasquez lands a bloody lead story, she attracts the attention of a killer. Newly promoted as the assistant to Matthew Henderson, California's Valley Voice investigative reporter, Corina wants only to prove to her boss, her coworkers—and herself—that she's the right choice for the job. When the body of the city's first woman mayor is discovered in a dusty vineyard—and her boss is nowhere to be found—Corina gets her chance. Then a second brutal murder connects to the first. As she unearths the details around both killings, Corina begins to suspect that she's merely skimming the surface of a very deep conspiracy. And only one person can help her—acting mayor Wes Shaw, the man who broke her heart. Wes wants her back. Henderson wants her off the story. And as her reporting of the case thrusts her into the limelight, Corina realizes she's become a target for an unpredictable—and desperate—enemy.

Twenty-two minutes—that's all it takes for reporter Geri LaRue to realize her friend, award-winning journalist Leta Blackburn, is missing. Leta would have been covering the sensational story—and investigating the forensics report that showed the priest was engaged in sexual activities at the time of his murder. With a ruthless colleague suggesting Geri knows more than she'll admit, she turns to a prominent shrink for help, taking with her a folder full of notes that points to the rarest and most deadly of killers: a woman. Therapist Malcolm Piercy is the only one who understands what goes on inside the twisted mind of the predator the papers are calling The Razor Killer, an erotomaniac who believes her victims are in love with her. Malc has reasons of his own for keeping his theory a secret, but agrees to help in Geri's search, not knowing that the killer is watching, in her mind writing one more newspaper caption—one more cutline—where the photograph is gruesome and the bottom line is death.

Journalist Geri LaRue is outraged when she loses the paper's "Off the Record" column to an insufferable colleague. To salvage her career and her waning self-confidence, Geri needs a break—and fast. The perfect story comes when successful businesswoman Kathleen Fowler is found dead—her battered body dropped from the balcony of her home to the cliffs below. But Geri doesn't have to chase this story; she inherits it. Somehow she has been named the murdered woman's sole beneficiary, despite never having met her. As Geri sets out to discover why the estate has been left to her, everything leads back to her own troubled childhood. A childhood she would rather forget—the foster homes, the painful memories. And when another person is brutally murdered, Geri realizes that the key to finding a killer may be hidden in her own mind.