Be with the Dead: An Ann Kinnear Suspense Novel

Ann Kinnear has been invited to the Gotham Crime Fiction Conference to give a talk on "Making the Supernatural Super in Your Novel." She isn't enthusiastic about adding public speaking to the offerings of Ann Kinnear Sensing, but at least it's unlikely to land her in the hospital.

Ann's conference liaison, editor Darren Van Osten, is contending with problems of his own. His favorite—and only—client, bestselling thriller author Jock Quine, was killed during a burglary at his Princeton mansion, and now Darren is trying to coach Jock's bookish son Alec to pick up the authorial torch from his larger-than-life father. When Alec catches Ann trying to contact Jock's spirit at Darren's behest, he proves not too bookish to level some threats. Darren's best hope of staying solvent is to capitalize on his most mysterious client, Lara Seaford, whose debut novel is sweeping the thriller awards.

Meanwhile, cozy mystery author Marilee Forsythe is demanding that her son and daughter-in-law, Jeremy and Jeanette, repay a loan so she can buy out her cozy contract and switch to her true calling: writing thriller novels. An attack on Marilee leaves her unable to leave her Ocean City, Maryland condo. Only Jeanette's fear that Marilee will demand immediate repayment of the loan--a demand that she and Jeremy could only meet by selling their naturopathic pharmacy--keeps Jeanette from delivering a far-from-cozy rebuke to her unpleasant and demanding mother-in-law.

As Ann's involvement in Jeanette and Darren's dilemmas deepens, she begins to suspect that there is more in common between the two cases than mere authorial posturing ... and that the stakes are life and death.

Better be with the dead,

Whom we to gain our peace have sent to peace,

Than on the torture of the mind to lie

In restless ecstasy.

William Shakespeare, "Macbeth"