Kate Delafield Mystery

Tough and demanding LAPD Detective Kate Delafield is the leader of the investigation into a high-rise office building murder. The case is intriguing, but routine - until Kate interviews the only witness, Ellen O'Neil. When Ellen O'Neil took her new job over the objections of her lover, she wasn't expecting to become embroiled in murder. The curiosity that Kate Delafield rouses is equally unexpected. But it is never far from Ellen's mind that she is merely a name on an interview sheet to the tight-lipped detective. Kate's thin trail of clues are enough to convince her that she is looking for an amateur, and amateurs are notoriously unpredictable and dangerous. She finds her path increasingly intersecting with that of Ellen O'Neil, who is proving unpredictable and dangerous in a far more personal way.

Dory Quillin, nineteen-years old, her white-blonde hair ruffled by the gentle breezes of a June evening, lies dead in the parking lot of a lesbian bar. Her bewildered silver-blue eyes stare beseechingly into the mind and soul of the woman who kneels beside her: LAPD homicide detective Kate Delafield. The investigation is far from a simple matter. Kate uncovers shocking facts about the brief life of the murdered young lesbian. She finds her road to the killer obstructed by Dory's uncooperative, judgmental parents, the waning interest of her own partner, and most frustrating of all, the open hostility of women who should be her allies - the lesbians who frequent the Nightwood Bar. Kate's emotional equilibrium is further disturbed by her powerful attraction to one of those women, the enigmatic Andrea Ross. Who killed Dory Quillin? And why? Accompany Kate Delafield on her electrifying, emotional journey to the answer, an answer you will never forget.

On Thanksgiving Day, LAPD homicide detective Kate Delafield and her partner, Ed Taylor, are called to an apartment building on the edge of Beverly Hills to investigate a premeditated and pitiless murder. No one appears particularly grieved by the shocking end to old-time Hollywood director Owen Sinclair. Surely not three other tenants of the Beverly Malibu, who worked in the motion picture industry during the blacklist years and loathed Sinclair. Nor is Sinclair's latest ex-wife grieved or even his children. Nor film actress and former paramour Maxine Marlowe. Nor Dudley Kincaid, whose brilliant screenplay Sinclair stole. Nor landlady Hazel Turner, whose husband, Jerome, is deceased but not exactly gone... Kate sifts through tantalizing clues: a set of handcuffs fastening the murdered man to his bed of death, an album of a Wagner opera, a bourbon bottle lightly dosed with arsenic, a silver frame missing its photo. She is also in a quandary over her fascination with Paula Grant, who discovered the murdered man. Until she is suddenly confounded by a wholly new aspect of herself uncovered by Aimee Grant, Paula Grant's remarkably beautiful young niece...

Young Teddie Crawford is dead from multiple stab wounds in a restaurant kitchen awash with blood. LAPD homicide detective Kate Delafield is relentless in her pursuit and capture of his killer. But bringing that killer to trial imperils Kate's professional standing and personal privacy - and her belief in the justice system to which she has devoted her life. The suspect claims self-defense - that Teddie Crawford made a homosexual advance and backed it up with a knife. Yet everything Kate learns about Teddie Crawford tells her that his murder was deliberate. And to develop proof of first-degree murder, she must find clear answers to mystifying questions for the prosecuting attorney - a woman who has never before prosecuted a homicide case. Kate is increasingly isolated as she tries to shield her young lover from the brutal realities of this case and finds few allies among her LAPD brethren. Even her partner, Ed Taylor, is loath to aggressively pursue a case involving a dead gay man and his gay associates. As the trial date looms, she discovers she has a personal stake: the defense attorney is a man from her past. A man with the power to expose the private life she has kept rigidly separate from her life as a police officer.

For LAPD Homicide Detective Kate Delafield, Washington DC is the last place on earth she wants to be. But, thanks to her partner's machinations, here she is. Driven by insatiable curiosity about a past Kate has adamantly refused to share, Aimee has maneuvered her into attending what Aimee views as an innocuous reunion of the men and women with whom Kate served as a Marine Corps officer in Vietnam twenty-five years ago. The past resurfaces with a vengeance. First, shots are fired into their hotel room. Then a savage murder is committed by someone attending the reunion. Kate finds herself embroiled in a murder investigation in a city where she has no jurisdiction, confronted by detectives who view her with contentious suspicion. And Aimee learns to her consternation that Kate has had very good reasons to hold her memories at bay. Shocking secrets emerge-among them the alluring Rachel, who has now, thanks to Aimee, reentered Kate's life. In unknown and hostile terrain, Kate must find a way through her tumultuous emotions, must use all her training and resourcefulness to protect herself and Aimee from the lethal danger gathering all around them.

Kate Delafield is at war. With LAPD's Department of Internal Affairs which is challenging her conduct during an arrest gone disastrously wrong. With the police psychologist who holds in her hands the power to keep Kate off the job - and is exercising it. With her police partner who has gone AWOL in Kate's hour of need. With the police colleagues who condemn the investigation, and defense she's undertaken for a cowboy cop who looks guilty beyond doubt of the bad shooting charges brought against him. With the woman she loves who has been brutally reminded of the dangers in Kate's job. Worst of all, Kate is at war with herself, forced to question the integrity of her own police department, and forced to make a decision that will crucially affect her own LGBT community. Apparition Alley ranks as the most electric and suspenseful of the storied Kate Delafield Mystery series.

LAPD Detective Kate Delafield has a new, iron-willed female lieutenant - a tough new partner who may turn out to be a much-needed ally. She also has a dangerous new case. A reclusive old man has been brutally slain at the La Brea Tar Pits. The unusual investigation could uncover the truth of humanity's ancient past, and at the same time expose the corruption and violence of the present. And everyone involved - from an alluring scientist with a dark secret to a treacherous CIA officer with his own agenda - is suspect. With more at stake than just a pile of bones, Kate has to gather together the pieces of a timeless puzzle, and make sure they all fit - before a remorseless killer decides to make her a part of history...

LAPD Detective Kate Delafield has a new, iron-willed female lieutenant, a tough new partner who may turn out to be a much-needed ally. She also has a dangerous new case. A reclusive old man has been brutally slain at the La Brea Tar Pits. The unusual investigation could uncover the truth of humanity's ancient past, and at the same time expose the corruption and violence of the present. And everyone involved, from an alluring scientist with a dark secret to a treacherous CIA officer with his own agenda, is suspect. With more at stake than just a pile of bones, Kate has to gather together the pieces of a timeless puzzle, and make sure they all fit, before a remorseless killer decides to make her a part of history...

The most celebrated detective in lesbian literature returns in the most fateful case of her career... Four years retired, Kate Delafield has a twenty-year-old case roaring back on her, a case from which she had recoiled, withdrawn herself. A homophobic homicide far too reminiscent of a recent, haunting, life-changing investigation of the murder of a young lesbian at the Nightwood Bar. Now she suffers in secret, knowing she is personally culpable for the mishandling of evidence. The key decisions about the conduct of her life and her police career that have brought her directly to this time, this place in the high desert where she has taken herself. All she can do now, she resolves, is protect as best she can the people she loves most, especially Aimee, from this threat. And, until her time runs out, she can go back and investigate, determine who actually ended the life of fifteen-year-old April Shuster. But events, people, intervene. New people in her present life, some from her past. And they will take her in the most unexpected of directions.