Several readers have asked me when my next book will be out.  Here’s an update.

Jack the Ripper sceneBook 5 is titled Time Lapse and it takes place during Victorian times in London and involves the Jack the Ripper murders.  With significant twists and turns and, I hope, a shocking ending.

The modern characters include digital photographer, Maggie Thornhill and her best friend, Rosie, a golden retriever.  Frank Mead is the smart but surly homicide lieutenant.  Add to the mix, Winston Cain, an FBI agent brought into the case because the crimes cross international borders.

The historical characters started their antics during the Civil War (in Time Exposure) and the villains who got away with treason and murder in the 1860s are now alive and well in the 1880s–committing still more heinous crimes.

Time Lapse is currently in the St. Martin’s Press writing competition, Malice Domestic.  St. Martin’s generally selects traditional “Whodunits” and even though my books don’t seem to fit that criteria, I was, indeed, a finalist several years ago for The Triangle Murders.  In fact, a judge called me, very excited to nominate it.

One of the problems with writing non-traditional mysteries, as my agent once told me, is that publishers don’t know how to market them.  Are they history, mystery, technology, science, what?  In any case, Time Lapse will not be published before late spring, early summer.

In the meantime, I have started work on a sixth mystery.  In this one, I return to World War II and the Nazis. The historic story takes place in Berlin from 1933 to 1945. This time the connection is not art, but music.  The rough premise is that, through a number of deviation gyrations, a German musician steals the musical compositions of a Jewish musician.  The repercussions are felt generations later amidst murder and mayhem in New York City.  The working title: The Final Note.

music 4In the modern story of The Final Note, Maggie Thornhill must figure out how to authenticate music rather than art, as she did in Deadly Provenance.  I have to figure it out first, so now, back to research!

Ideas welcome.