Bøger af Kristen Houghton

CATE HARLOW'S best friend, the lovely "lady of the New York City evening" Melissa Aubrincourt asks Cate and Cate's ex-husband, NYPD Detective Will Benigni to come to New Orleans. Her beloved Tante Anjali, the woman who raised Melissa, has been arrested for murder. What she doesn't tell Cate is that she needs her to conduct a private investigation into this murder of a notorious voodoo priestess who had been accused of kidnapping girls for a sex trade. As a "gifted person of magic" and powerful voodooienne rival of the murdered woman, Tante Anjali, is the prime suspect. She was found kneeling over the body of the murder victim, Fleur-Salí Cloutier, holding a bloody knife in her hands, yet she swears she did not kill her. But Anjali Aubrincourt is more than evasive about what really happened the night of the murder. Cate believes she is protecting the real murderer, but who and why? The answer to both may come from an imaginative fairy-like child who believes in magic and a goddess named Sainte Ursule. While Will works tirelessly with the New Orleans police and legal systems, Cate's own private investigation into the murder takes her into the mystical and frightening heart of New Orleans voodoo magic where the dead and the living co-exist, and a possible connection to witchcraft in her own family.

Private Investigator Cate Harlow finds herself involved in two cases that seemingly have nothing to do with each other; she soon discovers they may be bizarrely connected. While working the cold case of a boy who went missing ten years ago, she receives an early morning call from her ex-husband, a homicide detective, informing her about a recent murder; the horribly mutilated body of a priest, wearing only a clerical collar has just been found off of Interstate 95 in New York. The murder is eerily similar to a troublesome and unsolved case that Cate worked on less than a year ago. The only difference between the two victims is that the second dead body has a hand-written message in Latin scrawled across the inside of the priestly collar; a message from Dante's Divine Comedy, "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here." With the priests' murders heavily on her mind, Cate's investigation into the missing boy leads her to the august office of a New Jersey archbishop who, she strongly believes, has been hiding pedophile priests for years by transferring them from one parish to another. When Cate discovers that there may be a solid connection between the priest murders and the missing person cold case, she puts her own life on the line to not only solve her cold case but bring a pedophile to justice.

Cate Harlow's ex-husband and the love of her life, NYC Detective Will Benigni, has been shot and is in a dangerous dance with life and death at New York's Lenox Hill Hospital.His captain tells Cate that this was no random act of violence. This was an outright murder attempt on Will's life. Whoever shot him wanted him dead.While Cate's deals with the emotionally charged impact of seeing Will in a drug-induced coma in ICU, she is also dealing with a very strange missing spouse case. Cate is hired to find a woman named Wendy Wigand who went missing over a year ago. Neither her body, nor any trace of the woman, was ever found. A strange part of this case is that every single picture of this woman has disappeared, as well.The husband demands closure. "No matter what you find, I have to know what happened, so I can get on with my life."With no picture and no social contacts for this missing person to help her case, Cate is frustrated in her attempts to find the woman. It is as if Wendy Wigand never existed. As Cate Harlow delves deeper and deeper into the mystery, she finds herself embroiled in a story of jealousy, violence, and revenge that might tie Will's shooting and the missing spouse case together in a dangerous web of deceit.

Teddy Jameson awakens nude and confused in what appears to be a tropical paradise. His guide looks like Brad Pitt and the grounds look like a Sandals Resort. Nice, right? The only problem is that his guide has greeted him with these solemn words, "Mr. Theodore Carter Hugh Jameson, may I be the first to welcome you to Hell." Hell? That Hell seems to be an upscale and very expensive Caribbean resort and the man his guide introduces as the Devil appears to be a genial blonde-haired host in white shorts, polo shirt and sneakers with a passion for tennis, certainly adds to Teddy's confusion. Where's the fire and brimstone? Where are the horns and long pointed tail usually associated with the Devil? If this is Hell, it has certainly had a makeover. Unfortunately, a certain degree of panic is setting in fast. In less than 24 hours Teddy, in line for a full professorship, is meeting with the chairperson of his department who can make or break his career. And as Teddy informs his guide, "I want my career as well-made as a French whore's silk-sheeted bed!" His whole career is in danger of being lost if he misses that important meeting. What the hell is going on? Teddy suddenly thinks he just might know what is happening to him and why. This weird set-up seems as if it might be a joke played on him by his jealous, alcohol loving friend Bernie who, Teddy believes, wants to sabotage this very important meeting for him. That bastard Bernie has had him drugged and kidnapped!But as hours go by in a heat that is becoming unbearable, that idea fades. Teddy witnesses a woman being drowned and then coming back to life twenty-five times. A man is burned to death, rises alive like the Phoenix only to have the horror happen over and over again. Teddy knows his friend Bernie isn't smart enough to mastermind such an elaborate hoax that has so many strange and horrible twist and turns. His charming host darkly hints at certain unbreakable rules and regulations and insists that Teddy really does know where he is and why he's here. And what about Hell itself? If this really is Hell what is his beloved Uncle Charlie, a kind and gentle soul, doing there? What sin did he ever commit? In explanation his smiling host in tennis whites tells him, "Mr. Jameson, there are many different ways in which a person arrives here. Very few come here by the traditional method of selling their soul to the Devil. That's so old hat! You don't have to be a Hitler, a pedophile, a mass murderer, or a rapist to end up in Hell. It's all much more complex. There are certain...technicalities so to speak, certain...rules to be observed."