Fatal Fortune

May 19, 2014
Laurie ventures into thriller territory with her far from cozy 12th Psychic Eye mystery featuring psychic Abby Cooper (after 2013’s Deadly Forecast). Early one morning at home in Austin, Tex., Abby gets a voicemail from her best friend and business partner, Candice Fusco, who asks that she hide a document stashed in a safe in their office. “It’s not how it looks,” Candice claims, but a security tape soon surfaces showing her shooting a man point-blank in an airport parking lot. The police suspect that both the victim and Candice, who has disappeared, have links to organized crime. Abby’s FBI agent husband, Dutch Rivers, and Candice’s new husband, FBI agent Brice Harrison (who is also Abby’s boss), assist in the effort to find and exonerate Candice. Laurie portrays the mobsters involved in too mild a light, but she adds welcome psychological depth to Abby, who must function more like a PI than a psychic. Agent: Jim McCarthy, Dystel & Goderich Literary Management.

June 15, 2014
Can a psychic have missed the truth about her very best friend?Happily ever after isn't what Abby Cooper expected. Though things are going well with her husband, Dutch Rivers, despite his sometimes-dangerous work for the FBI, something's up with her best friend, Candice Fusco. Candice's quickie Las Vegas wedding to her beau-Dutch's boss, Brice-was much less eventful than Abby's nuptials were (Deadly Forecast, 2013), and everything seems to have settled down. So when Abby receives a mysterious phone call from Candice with some dire requests in the middle of the night, she's not sure what to make of it. Her first impulse is to spring into action to do as Candice asks, even though she must hide what she's doing from Brice and Dutch. Abby and Candice have been friends for years, so Candice must have a good reason for her enigmatic requests, right? Just hours later, Abby is shown a video of Candice meeting a stranger in a parking garage and killing him with a single shot. Maybe there's more to the story than she knew; maybe she never knew Candice as well as she thought. Determined to clear her best friend's name, or at least learn the truth, Abby heads to Vegas, where she must find out if she's been duped by Candice for as long as they've been friends.Although Abby's psychic visions-which offer tantalizing hints about Candice's past-carry the potential for a more revealing story, Laurie sticks with what she does best, concentrating on her heroine's snappy inner monologue without letting too much hinge on plot details.

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