Hey, gang,

I just submitted the manuscript for the eighth book in my Wisconsin-based Maggy Thorsen Mysteries. This one is called Murder on the Orient Espresso, and I had great fun with it.  MotOE is set in South Florida, where Maggy’s main squeeze, Sheriff Jake Pavlik, has been invited to speak at a mystery writer’s conference. Maggy is hoping for a romantic weekend, but instead is whisked away to the opening night event, an re-enactment of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express.  As Maggy and Jake reluctantly set off on the night train to the Everglades to solve the “crime,” it’s clear that, as in the original novel, nothing is quite what it seems. Or, as the jacket copy puts it:

Amidst rumors of careers taken, manuscripts stolen and vows broken, it seems that in the Everglades – as in life – the predator all too often becomes the prey.

Coming December 1, 2013 from Severn House . . .

Hey! Just in time for Christmas!

Sandy

Publishers Weekly on Dead Ends, the new Main Street Murder from Severn House

“Near the start of Balzo’s well-crafted second mystery featuring Wisconsin reporter AnnaLise Griggs (after 2011’s Running on Empty), AnnaLise is in Sutherton, N.C., where she’s been looking after her ailing mother. She’s surprised and embarrassed by the arrival of her former lover, Benjamin Rosewood, the DA of Urban County, Wis., and his wife, Tanja, and their teenage daughter, Suzanne. Ashamed of her dangerous liaison, AnnaLise tries to avoid Rosewood, but is drawn to him after Tanja dies in a terrible car accident on Sutherton Mountain. When one tragedy follows another, AnnaLise finds herself in the middle of a tightening web of deadly intrigue—and at the top of police chief Chuck Greystone’s suspect list. The well-drawn North Carolina setting is integral not only to the plot but also perhaps to AnnaLise’s most endearing quality—her abject terror of the area’s narrow mountain roads, full of crazy switchbacks and heart-stopping overhangs.”