Affection for Crime

by T.M. Smith

“Curiosity is lying in wait for every secret.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Las Vegas Gazette crime columnist Maggie Hall, through clever journalistic questioning or blind bumbling, follows a bribery scandal that leads to two murders and attempts on her own life. A native Las Vegan and combination of Luella Parsons, Scarlett O’Hara, and Typhoid Mary, Maggie is well suited for her profession.
When people go missing and dead bodies start to pile up, Maggie realizes she’s on the trail of the hottest story of her career. She’s also on the trail of two of the hottest men she’s ever met. Rick Steele, an investigative reporter at the Gazette, works the hard news angles of the murder case while managing to stay out of Maggie’s romantic clutches. Coop Demarco, however, one of the FBI agents assigned to the case, seems a far more willing partner.

262 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 24, 2012

About the author

After retiring from my career in education, I settled in to write something more creative than lesson plans on split infinitives and inner-school memos on noise in the hallway.

My first novel was the romantic mystery comedy romp Affection for Crime. I am now living with vampires, demons, ylves, mages, and other magical beings who keep me awake at night with their tales of love and adventure. Taking great interest in their lives, I began a paranormal romance series (or maybe what is now called romantasy) with alpha males who aren't always nice and females who have no problem keeping them in line. The Firebrand is the first book in the completed Blood Coven Series. The new series is the Blood Coven World.

Here are more orts, scraps, and fragments from my life. (Thank you, Virginia Wolf and Shakespeare.) I moved from sunny Las Vegas to the less-than-sunny Pacific Northwest. Here I have adventures with my daughter, son-in-law, and two granddaughters who also moved to the area. I also enjoy my membership at Bainbridge Artisan Resource Network (BARN), a local organization that supports the arts and offers classes and events in eleven different studios. It was at BARN where my critique group began. With equal time given to in-depth comments on each other's works, snarky remarks, and laughter, we have now been together over five years.