As KPD’s in-house police psychologist, I should be counseling cops not spending time with Ava, an adopted temperamental eighteen-year-old girl who alternately demands and rejects my help finding her birth parents. She’s my friend Fran’s goddaughter. Fran is KPD’s only police widow. How could I refuse?

Ava’s plenty smart. She’s already spoken to her birth mother Iliana on the phone and now wants to meet face-to-face. When Iliana refuses, something she says convinces Ava that she was stolen at birth. It seems far-fetched to me, but certainly less painful than believing, as she has for most of her young life, that she was unwanted and unloved.

I keep telling Fran that I don’t know how to work with teenagers. She keeps telling me she needs my help. Especially after Ava accuses her adoptive parents, Sharon and Dan, of buying her from a baby trafficker. Sharon falls apart emotionally and Dan turns to drink.

My husband Frank doesn’t want me to get involved. I try to explain, but he doesn’t get it. I see parts of my younger self in Ava. I empathize with her search for the truth and relate to her efforts to grow up healthy in a family sick with secrets. Maybe she wasn’t stolen, but Iliana, who has her own troubles, is either hiding something or protecting Ava from the truth. The only way to figure this out is to succumb to Ava’s repeated pleas that I meet Iliana in person.

My motives aren’t entirely pure. When I first started at KPD, a young rookie named Ben Gomez killed himself. Am I agreeing, against my better judgement, to meet Ava’s birth mother because I still feel guilty about his death? Am I erring on the side of doing too much, rather than too little because of him? Am I wrong to keep helping the unstoppable Ava when my gut tells me that what we will find might heal one family but will almost certainly destroy another?

Call Me Carmela, A Dot Meyerhoff Mystery Book 5
Genre: Psychological Thriller
Release: November 2024
Format: Print, Digital
Purchase Link

Police therapist Dot Meyerhoff helps a young woman find her birth parents and unburies dark family secrets in this psychological thriller.

Police psychologist Dot Meyerhoff’s caseload is usually filled with cops—which is why she’s hesitant to help an adopted teenager locate her birth parents. But the teen’s godmother is Dot’s dear friend Fran and a police widow to boot. How could Dot possibly say no?

Once Dot starts digging into the case, though, she’s drawn into a murky world of illegal adoptions and the choices a young pregnant woman might make as a last resort. Soon there’s only one thing Dot knows for sure: the painful truth of what happened all those years ago might heal one family—but it’s certain to destroy another.

About the author
Ellen Kirschman is an award-winning police and public safety psychologist. She is the author of three non-fiction books and the Dot Meyerhoff mystery series. Ellen finds writing fiction to be therapeutic. She gets to take potshots at nasty cops, incompetent psychologists, and her two ex-husbands. Dot Meyerhoff, her protagonist, is named after her mother and maternal grandmother. Too dedicated for her own good, Dot takes orders from no one, including her chief, and persists in solving crimes when she should be counseling cops—often using methods that would have cost Ellen her license. Ellen lives in Redwood City, California with her husband, whose entire life she has plagiarized for Dot’s love interest, Frank. She adores Zumba, dogs, cats, and ice cream. Sign up for her occasional newsletter at ellenkirschman.com and receive a mini-memoir of her time as a dance hall hostess in Times Square.