Search

DEATHLESS IN DENVER The reports of Jenna McLaren’s demise were premature. Because Jenna–nervous, well-appointed, and very much alive–was sitting in risk manager Vicky Lucci’s office, with a copy of her own death certificate. Now Vicky has to find out how her Denver hospital pronounced Jenna dead . . . and why. For Vicky, the answers come fast and furious–along with a rising tide of mystery, suspicious behavior, and unexplained deaths. With a lucrative job offer dangling in front of her eyes, Vicky may be leaving the medical center just in the nick of time. On the other hand, with lies, secrets, and the promise of an unproven miracle drug swirling all around her, Vicky may be doing just what a killer ordered: leaving the heat–for the fire. . . . DECLARED DEAD

GOOD SEX. BIG MONEY. BAD BLOOD . . . A successful risk manager who loves living life on the edge, Victoria Lucci (pronounced "lucky") wears Norma Kamali, dates too many married men, and strives to keep her Denver hospital out of the headlines. But her job is about to take an unlucky turn: Patients are winding up dead, and it looks like someone in the hospital is responsible. . . . Four people have been given tainted blood. Vicki has suspects, leads, evidence, even the cops on her side. The trouble is, she can't help taking matters into her own hands. And when the matter is murder, that means she runs the greatest risk of all: losing her life.

LIFE SUPPORT Earlier in the evening, Victoria Lucci (pronounced "lucky") had champagne and a wedding on her mind. When she returns to work in her friend's stretch limousine, stark reality sets in. An armed man is loose in the Denver hospital where Vicky is the risk manager. Now dozens of lives are in danger. Vicky finds the crazed gunman herself--he has taken a group hostage in the maternity ward, including a young woman who is about to deliver a baby. While many of the patients flee, Vicky cannot abandon the terrified mother and father. And for Vicky Lucci, the risks are all too clear: what she says and how she behaves in the next six hours will make all the difference between who will live and who will die before the dawn. . . .

HIGH RISK. WICKED VIBES. BAD LUCK . . . A risk manager for Denver's Montgomery Hospital, Victoria Lucci (pronounced "lucky") works too hard, drives too fast, and has just skidded into a heap of trouble: She hit a black cat belonging to a comely young witch. But before Vicki can extricate herself from the injured animal and its curse-wielding owner, her life at the hospital starts to unravel. A nymphomaniac attacks a patient, one of Vicki's colleagues disappears, and the wife of a prominent surgeon falls into a coma--after coming in for a routine nip and tuck. Is it the result of the witch's evil eye or the sinister work of someone trying to plunge Montgomery into a megalawsuit? Before Vicki can ferret out the truth, murder rocks her world. Now she doesn't need tarot cards to read the future: There's a killer in the hospital. And Vicki's luck is running out. . . .

On the pleasures of solitude, the stress and satisfaction of work, the strength of long-lasting relationships, the reality of our bodies and more.

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Illustration in the Graduate School of Syracuse University.

For Jonathan Lethem, "crime stories are deep species gossip." He writes in his introduction that "they're fundamentally stories of power, of its exercise, both spontaneous and conspiratorial; stories of impulse and desire, and of the turning of tables." The Best American Mystery Stories 2019 has its full share of salacious intrigue, guilt, and retribution. The twists and bad decisions pile up when a thief picks the wrong target or a simple scavenger hunt takes a terrible turn. What happens when you befriend a death row inmate, or just how does writing Internet clickbait became a decidedly dangerous occupation? "How can we not hang on their outcomes?" asks Lethem. "Are we innocent ourselves, or complicit?" Read on to find out.