Carlotta Carlyle

A case almost a quarter of a century cold turns red hot again when Linda Barnes's detective and part-time cabby, Carlotta Carlyle, gets ensnared in the hunt for the source of a manuscript in the unmistakable voice of Thea Janis, the young literary sensation who disappeared twenty-four years ago at the height of her fame. Thea was 15 when she vanished, after Nightmare's Dawn, her brilliant debut novel, propelled her and her prominent Boston family into the painful glare of the spotlight society reserves for genius. Now, pages from an inflammatory new manuscript are appearing, written in a voice that could be none other than Thea's. But a madman sits in a Massachusetts state prison, convicted of her murder. The "cold case" squad of the Boston Police, specializing in old unsolved mysteries, won't touch this one - they want to keep it irrevocably closed. Thea's brother, a dashing politician, is in the middle of a hotly contested gubernatorial race and has other problems, with a fiery young wife and a reputation for ruthlessness. Thea's older sister has withdrawn into her own oblivion. And her aristocratic mother finds her refuge in a bottle. Who wrote the new manuscript? Who is sending it piecemeal to Thea's family, demanding chapter-by-chapter blackmail? Who is playing games with Carlotta with every loaded word? Is Thea alive or dead? Is the author a victim, a plagiarist...or a killer? Carlotta Carlyle confronts demons from the past and from the present as she peels back layer upon layer of a glittering family's dark secrets in Cold Case, her toughest and most intriguing assignment yet.