NYPD Detective Chiara Corelli here. And since most days in my life include my partner Detective P.J. Parker, she’s here too. The last time we appeared on dru’s book musings, I went out of my way to point out that there were no muffins, no cute small towns and no kittens involved in my life. Though the muffins and cute small towns are still missing, two kittens saved my life when the murderer we were seeking tried to kill me. Unfortunately the kittens weren’t around the second time the killer took aim at me and if Parker hadn’t been there I would have bled out from the gun shot wounds. But I digress. The kittens have adopted me. And, though it took me a while to acknowledge it, I’ve adopted them too. Kind of embarrassing for a veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and a seasoned police officer to admit that rather than a large emotional support dog I have two emotional support kittens. But such is life. Now if I could come up with names for them all would be well.

Oops. Back to our day. Though Parker and I don’t always get along, we do manage to solve the high visibility cases we seem to end up with. Just a couple of days after I persuaded my surgeon I had recovered sufficiently from the multiple gun shot wounds mentioned above to work limited duty, we caught a case that was beyond the proverbial hot potato. It was a handful of live wires.

A U.S. senator, a minister of a mega church and a billionaire. It sounds like the beginning of a joke. But it isn’t. And as if who they were wasn’t enough, all three were naked, had recently had sex and were in a room obviously designed for multiple simultaneous sexual events, with cameras, mirrors and costumes. The message written in blood on the mirror and the three little surprises we found in the closet tied it all up nicely in a big red bow. A neon sign flashing “career killer” was the only thing missing.

Oh, did I mention that somehow with eight million people in New York City Parker’s uncle and my brother-in-law are right smack in the middle of the case?

Though Parker and I find our three prominent victims personally offensive we are committed to balancing the scales of justice. But what’s really driving us to work the case is our desire to expose and punish the men and women who profit from selling children for sex. Even with a case as politically sensitive and as distasteful to Parker and me as it probably is to you, most of our days are spent on routine tasks like interviewing friends and acquaintances of the dead men and sifting through the evasions and outright lies trying to identify motives and suspects.

The biggest excitement in our typical day is my too frequent explosions of rage, which I dump on Parker. She attributes the rage to my PTSD. She believes it’s exacerbated by the stress of finding three little girls the same age as my niece Gabriella in that closet. And she doesn’t even know about my flashbacks to the three murdered little girls in Afghanistan. I haven’t admitted that I have PTSD and I haven’t confessed to being stressed by being in love, yet not being able to let go of the lover I saw die in Afghanistan. I can’t feel the love without feeling the guilt.

But don’t despair. I’m finally taking steps to deal with things. So now a typical day in my life might include a yoga class, not your yuppie yoga but yoga run by veterans for veterans who like me served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Being surrounded by men and women, some with external wounds, others like me with internal wounds, who understand my issues is helpful.

I’m even thinking of going to a PTSD group for women veterans. My goal is to be more like the woman I was before I watched my lover die and before I went undercover to expose a group of corrupt, murdering cops, some of them my good friends. But that’s for another book. And a different day in my life.

A Message in Blood by Catherine Maiorisi, Chiara Corelli Mystery #3
Genre: Traditional
Release: January 2021
Purchase Link

A middle-of-the night phone call summons NYPD Detective Chiara Corelli and her partner, Detective P.J. Parker, to a politically sensitive murder scene. The victims―a U.S. Senator, the pastor of a mega church, and a self-made music industry billionaire―appear to have been killed during a sex orgy.

Pressure is mounting to cover up the circumstances. But Corelli and Parker are enraged by the words scrawled in blood on a mirror, and their hearts are broken by what they find hidden in a closet. Now the partners vow to find the killer and expose the unsavory lives of these men while seeking justice for the real victims in this case―the children.

About the author
Catherine Maiorisi lives in New York City. She is the author of the NYPD Detective Chiara Corelli mystery series featuring Corelli and her reluctant partner, Detective P.J. Parker. These two tough women fight each other and stand against the blue wall while solving high profile crimes.

The first two books in the series, A Matter of Blood and The Blood Runs Cold were Lambda Literary Award finalists. The third, A Message in Blood, was published in January 2021. Visit Catherine at catherinemaiorisi.com.

Catherine is an active member of Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America.

All comments are welcomed.