Karen Berg-Raftakis
She sat down on her old rocking chair, which had seen much better days, threw a well-used brown and mustard-yellow colored afghan over her lap, and eagerly reached for the remote control. She switched the station on the television over to HLN and sat back to watch one of her favorite TV shows and guilty pleasures Nancy Grace. Nancy Grace was a former prosecutor and a current crusader for justice who Mary admired very much. Mary, who was partially deaf, always watched the show at an exceedingly high volume. At the moment, Nancy was lambasting the supposedly grieving husband of a missing woman whose dead body had just been found. “Isn’t it obvious,” she stated with authority in her Georgia accent, “that the cheating bastard killed his wife??!!” Mary nodded her head vigorously. If she had learned one thing from Nancy Grace, it was that the killer was almost ALWAYS the husband or boyfriend. It was never the way those mystery writers portray it in books, where the killer is someone’s maid, uncle, or even dry-cleaner.
Excerpt from A Killing Too Close to Home
Mike immediately leaned in and began paying extra-close attention to the television.
“There is a Chicago area woman who the police are now calling ‘a person of interest’ in the case and are taking her in for questioning.”
Two women flashed upon the screen. One was being escorted into the station by two policemen. Her face was blurred out, but you could see she had long blond hair and was wearing a gray “Murdoch Mysteries” TV show T-shirt and denim cut-offs. The other was wearing a light-blue burka that, except for her eyes and a few strands of red stray hairs sticking out, covered her from head to toe. The woman was running behind them as fast as she could screaming, “Riann, don’t you worry ‘bout these damn pigs! I swear I’ll git you out if it’s the last thing I do!”
Mike and Sandra looked at each other, mouths agape.
When the breaking news was over, Barry was the first one to comment. “Well, babycakes, it looks like your daughter’s got herself in one helluva mess!”
Excerpt from Slaughter on Sanibel Island