Murder This Close (A Gold Coast Mystery, 2)

About the Author\nTimothy Cole’s multi-decade publishing career began writing about boats, wind, water and people. He takes his inspiration for the Gold Coast mystery series from his forty-year love for the State of Connecticut, a vibrant crossroads where people of all stripes and persuasions can be found plying their talents. The state’s focal point is Long Island Sound, a busy pathway for marine commerce, and a recreational boon for sailors and fishermen. Cole’s breakout debut novel, The Sea Glass Murders, was a finalist for the 2021 Connecticut Book Awards.\nTim also served as science/technology/aerospace editor at Popular Mechanics magazine, which included assignments to the South Pole, Siberia and aboard America’s nuclear Navy. He’s an instrument-rated private pilot, and holds a 50-ton captain’s license from the U.S. Coast Guard. He now serves as chief content officer of Belvoir Media Group, which publishes health news and information from Harvard Medical School, The Cleveland Clinic, Massachusetts General Hospital and other key health centers. He is sending Dasha on more exploits in The Moscow Five, Last Reich, and JFK: American Ambush. He lives in Greenwich, Connecticut with his wife and crewmate, Sarah Smedley. Learn more about Tim at his website: TimothyColeBooks.com.\nIn the wealthy Gold Coast enclave of Westport, a feud between mystery writers turns deadly—and retired spy Dasha Petrov must find the real killer to clear her name.
Once one of the most lethal secret agents in the world, Dasha Petrov has hunted Nazis, Communists, and one common murderer (in The Sea Glass Murders, the first Dasha Petrov thriller). But now it’s 1991, two years after that unpleasantness, and Dasha is living a sedate life appropriate to an elderly widow in wealthy Westport, Connecticut, spoiling her grandchildren and innocently flirting with two of her neighbors, the rival mystery novelists Barnaby Jayne and Michael Aubrey.\nThe two writers, both wildly successful and many times married, cordially despise each other. Dasha thinks they’re just two silly men with big egos, but the writers’ feud boils over into a bizarre series of attacks that starts with a blowgun dart and escalates to booby traps and car bombs. And when Jayne and Aubrey both turn up dead, the evidence points to one suspect—Dasha herself.\nNow Dasha has to once again call upon her cunning mind and capacity for extreme violence, honed by her younger years as a Nazi-killing partisan and a top-rank CIA agent. Teaming up with her old allies, Westport police chief Tony DeFranco and local TV reporter Tracy Taggart, Dasha sets out to clear her name, find the real killer, and figure out why she was targeted—while dodging jealous wives, a sleazy tabloid reporter, child spies, and a fearsome Mafia hit man, leading to a tense and dramatic confrontation.\nFast-paced and filled with intriguing characterization, Murder This Closeis a stunning murder mystery with a twisty cerebral plot and plenty of hard-hitting action.