THE BOOKS
So happy that there are now two mystery series to choose from. The Dreama Black mysteries follow the (mis)adventures of the twenty-something, third-generation rock and roll groupie, Dreama Black, who runs bespoke tours of Los Angeles by day, and sidesteps dead bodies by night. The Cece Caruso mysteries focus on the madcap exploits of ex-beauty queen Cece Caruso — mystery biographer extraordinaire, vintage clothing enthusiast, and semi-reluctant sleuth. Read one, or read all!
Cece Caruso—mystery biographer extraordinaire, vintage clothing enthusiast, and part-time sleuth—is in freefall. First, she calls off her wedding, for reasons even she can't explain. Second, her newest biography—of Alfred Hitchcock—is way past deadline. So Cece puts on a houndstooth suit with peplum and heads out to see Vertigo, only to come home with a cell phone belonging to a stranger named Anita Colby. Nothing if not a good citizen, Cece tries to return the cell phone—only to hear someone push Anita Colby off a cliff. Now Anita's dead, and Cece's under suspicion (tip: don't leave rambling, incoherent messages on someone's answering machine just before she gets murdered). To clear her name and put the real murderer in jail, Cece goes on the lam, where she'll encounter mysterious strangers, unhelpful strippers, a bottle of Hitchcock blond hair dye, and twists and turns so eerie it's as if the auteur himself were writing the script.
In DREAM A LITTLE DEATH, Dreama maps out a killer tour of L.A.'s secret film noir locations for a Raymond Chandler-obsessed rap producer only to find herself in the middle of a suicide that may have been a murder, a $40,000 pay-off that keeps appearing and disappearing, and an unforgettable pair of femmes fatales who may or may not be the same person. The clock is ticking as Dreama races down the jasmine-scented alleys and rain-slicked asphalt of Southern California, trying to keep the body count to a minimum, and desperate to save the only father she's ever known, an L.A.P.D. detective who will lose not only his name, but his life, if Dreama can't make murder her business.
Dream A Little Death available in paperback from Amazon July 11!
The forty-year-old Cece is about to become a grandmother for the first time, and a wife for the second. Meanwhile, her latest labor of love, a biography of Agatha Christie, is posing a challenge as Cece struggles to uncover the details of a murky incident in Agatha’s life – a mysterious eleven-day disappearance. To top it off, her concerned accountant has oh-so-helpfully hooked her up with a job moonlighting as an event planner. The job seems like a perfect fit: she’s working for Ian Christie, an English housing developer who is in the process of unveiling a new mystery-themed housing development east of Los Angeles, aptly named Christietown. As part of the grand opening festivities, Cece decides to stage an Agatha Christie-inspired murder mystery tea. But when her leading lady turns up dead, Cece finds herself starring in a real-life murder mystery, struggling to extricate herself from a web of shady land developers, marital infidelity, and a second murder -- all while struggling to uncover the dark secret to Agatha Christie’s painful, doomed marriage, a mystery which just might hold the answer to the deaths in Christietown.
Los Angeles writer Cece Caruso is thrilled that her biography of mystery writer Dashiell Hammett is headed for the big screen. Even better, Cece is getting paid to tutor Rafe Simic, the gorgeous actor cast for the lead. Okay, so he's not the sharpest knife in the drawer. But he's really cute and the money's good.Too bad he might also be a killer. When the body of a woman turns up, Rafe's picture is found among her effects. The victim, it turns out, was a blast from Rafe's past. In a plot that could come right out of a Hammett novel, Cece sets out to find justice for the dead woman, even if it means pulling the plug on the movie. The only thing is, someone might pull the plug on Cece first.
Biographer and amateur sleuth Cece Caruso will freely admit that she spent her youth idolizing girl detective Nancy Drew, a fantasy that undoubtedly influenced her grown-up job writing biographies of dead mystery writers. But, as Cece will discover driving down the highway in her Jackie O sunglasses and a borrowed baby-blue Cadillac, some fantasies die harder than others.Researching the life of "Carolyn Keene," the pseudonymous author of the Nancy Drew mysteries, Cece meets a flamboyant collector of "Blue Nancys," the original books with blue covers. When he finds out she is taking a road trip to Palm Springs to snoop around at the annual Nancy Drew fan convention, he offers her the use of his swanky vacation house. But the last thing she expects to find lying around the swimming pool is one very dead body.In a race against time that takes her from a secret enclave of restored Victorians near downtown L.A. to the driest stretches of California desert, Cece will have to channel her former idol and then some to unmask a sly killer -- before he comes after her.
All that writer Cece Caruso, a 39-year-old former beauty queen from Jersey, really wants to do is finish her biography of Erle Stanley Gardner so she can finally stop obsessing about Perry Mason. Well, that, and find a 1970 silk chiffon Ossie Clark to add to her collection of vintage clothing. But first she has to help save her daughter's floundering marriage, which is more than Cece could manage for her own.Everybody's got problems. In a last-ditch effort to kick a bad case of writer's block, Cece pays a visit to a prison inmate who had once corresponded with Gardner, pleading his innocence. Her impetuousness lands her smack in the middle of a case worthy of Perry Mason himself, a double-edged mystery linking a forty-year old murder to one where the body is still warm. Propelled by tenacity, curiosity, a sense of humor, and an understanding of human nature's dark side, Cece will channel the inner sleuth she never realized she possessed to find a killer who is all too real--and all too close.
