About A Perilous Premiere
A Perilous Premiere (Stone & Steele Mysteries)
Historical Cozy Mystery
1st in Series
Setting
California
Publisher
Cranberry Pond Publishing (November 15, 2024)
Paperback
182 pages
ISBN-13
979-8227660671
Digital ASIN
B0CZS3J93M
Solving their own murders is the least of their problems…and the beginning of Stone & Steele, a reluctant yet surprisingly skilled investigative team.
The Golden Age of Hollywood, 1938. Vivian Steele moved to California to start a new life. She opened a fashion boutique in Beverly Hills, befriended Carole Lombard, the actress, and married a successful banker. But when her husband is murdered, Vivian discovers she isn't the only one hiding a few secrets.
An anonymous phone call lures Vivian to a plush hotel room where she stumbles upon the dead body of a beautiful young actress – her husband’s mistress. To add fuel to the fire, she's not alone.
Preston Stone, her adversary and Hollywood’s notorious playboy, is standing beside her. Suspiciously, they part ways only to find themselves alone again at a movie premiere two days later, and the message becomes brutally clear. They’re both the next targets of a cold-blooded killer.
Together, Vivian and Preston are thrown into a deadly race to find a missing collection of valuable coins and stop a vicious killer before they become the next murder victims. But first, they need to stop pointing their fingers at each other.
A Perilous Premiere is the first book in this exciting new 1930s Stone & Steele mystery series starring a great cast of characters ranging from the rich and famous to Bella, a Boston Terrier, her new friend, Boris, a Saint Bernard, and a few other endearing folks. (A pretty clean read)
Excerpt
A cold, morbid chill ran down Vivian’s spine when she caught sight of the man who had taken her husband from her and destroyed their future together. She glared at him as he strolled over to the lamppost, leaned against it, and lit a cigarette.
He appeared so casual standing there, as though he didn’t have a care in the world. As though he wasn’t a cold-blooded murderer. His black hair was slicked back, his sun-leathered skin aged him well beyond his thirty-five years, and even at this distance, she could see the sunken pits on his cheeks, scars from a childhood bout of chicken pox.
She never got a look at his ugly face that fateful night. The swine had slithered past her on the sidewalk and followed George inside the drugstore. It wasn’t until the police questioned a few witnesses afterward that they learned the killer’s identity, but Elliott Kimball seemed to have vanished into thin air. So, the police gave up the search. They labeled the burglary-gone-bad case unresolved and filed it away.
That’s when Vivian began an investigation of her own.
Easily, she discovered Kimball had plenty of petty arrests under his belt, and he was questioned as a suspect in mob-related murders twice, but he never spent any significant time in jail. He was just a two-bit hoodlum working by himself, and that made his trail even harder to follow.
When all was said and done, she’d risked much more than time and money trying to find him. Four months into it, she became so frustrated she finally resorted to pulling some strings from her past that she knew she’d regret. Yet, it also led her to Lucky, who assured her that they had something significant in their favor. Kimball was loathed more than liked by those who knew him, and that ended up being the key to finding him.
Lucky gently nudged her and pointed to another man across the street as he approached Kimball. They watched the two men chat briefly and head down the sidewalk together.
With perfect timing, the officers in the black sedans flicked on their high beams and sirens and sped toward them. Kimball and the other man panicked, pulled out their guns, and started shooting while they ran in different directions. But the unmarked cars came to a screeching halt on the sidewalk, trapping them both in front of several closed shops with no escape.
“Drop your weapons!” an officer shouted from the car.
In a flash, Kimball lifted his gun, pulled the trigger, and sent a sharp-shooting bullet through the sedan windshield, shattering the glass, and striking the officer in the driver’s seat. Then Kimball made a run for it.
Vivian watched the scene intently as the other officers furiously opened fire. At the same time, a squad of police officers rushed out from the shadows and swarmed the area, blocking her view. She stood on her tiptoes, trying to see. “Did they catch him?”
“Yeah, I’d say so,” Lucky told her. “They put enough bullets in him to kill an elephant. He obviously preferred death to life in prison.”
But Vivian’s eyes widened in alarm. Something was wrong. Tonight, Elliott Kimball pulled his gun out of his right pocket and used his right hand to shoot back at the police. The man who killed George was holding the gun in his left hand.
About Gail Meath
Gail Meath is the author of the multi-award-winning Jax Diamond Mysteries, the fun series about of a wise-cracking PI, his sweet German Shepherd partner, Ace, and his Broadway singing heartthrob, Laura, as they solve crazy crimes during the Roaring Twenties. She's currently working on the first book in her exciting new 1930s mystery series, Stone & Steele Mysteries, takes place during the glamorous Golden Age of Hollywood. As always, she blends the most loveable characters with a good, solid mystery.
Gail also has a growing list of other award-winning historical romances, mysteries, westerns, and fictional biographies of true heroines. She lives in a small village in Upstate New York with her husband and their sweet, little Boston Terrier, and she spends loads of time with her grandchildren.
Author Links
Website: https://www.gailmeath.com
Facebook: https://facebook.com/gailmeathauthor
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gailmeathauthor
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/220631482-a-perilous-premiere
Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/books/a-perilous-premiere-by-gail-meath
Purchase Links - Amazon - B&N - Kobo - Bookshop.org -
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