Boston City Daily Press:
BLOOD BANKS IN NEW ENGLAND ON ALERT AS HACKS CONTINUE
BOSTON MARATHON STILL ON SCHEDULE
Thirty thousand runners put that newspaper headline out of their minds this morning.
It’s the third Monday of April – and for over a hundred years, runners have pounded this prescribed twenty-six and some miles course from Hopkinton, Massachusetts to Boston Commons. I’ve already run more than half of the course and I’m getting closer to being a part of the Marathon history. I’m eyeing the darkening skies. It was bright earlier this morning – hours ago – when I was in the Corral, waiting for the ‘go’ with the fifty other Para-Athletes. Our group follows Group One – those that are expected to have the greatest chance of bringing home Boston Marathon’s big prize.
I pace past a silver Airstream; the placard on its side reads: Give Blood. Save Lives. A side wind sweeps across the course; the skin on my face goes cold. What I need is a tailwind.
The socket that holds my C-blade in place stays snug; it’s made of carbon fiber and silicone and is meant to help transfer energy from my hips to my blade. Running downhill on the blade takes special attention. I issue orders to myself: Do not think of the half-leg swelling, or sweating, or pounding against the socket, do not slip on the slick road. Do not fall. Do not think of one of those graves opening and offering me a place to rest.
“Chaos!”
I barely turn my head, barely see the tall runner in the cap and mask next to a Blood Bank Airstream station, holding both hands up. Each clench into a fist– all fingers are tucked under except the prominent third that pops towards the sky. Why? Is he trying to get on International Insta or on the nightly news? Uniformed cops run towards him…
**
That’s how my Monday started. Ten hours later, I was signing a contract for my first lead gig as a PI for G&Z Investigations and traveling with Wallace Walsh, one of the most respected (and one of the loneliest since he was left at the altar thirty years ago) attorneys in Portland Maine. We’re headed five hours up the coast —more specifically to a remote, private island that’s been owned for generations by the ultra-wealthy Cummings family. It now belongs solely to Freya Cummings, an ethereal beauty who hasn’t left the island since she was thirteen. That was more than two decades ago.
She’s got demons and she needs help.
Freya has been contacted by a nineteen-year-old petty criminal who is claiming, shockingly, to be Freya’s daughter – and a simple blood test or DNA test is not going to be able to provide all the answers to the mysteries that swirl around her claim. Cummings Island is no longer a hermit’s haven.
I’m in the middle of it— and when the second body is retrieved from Cummings Bay…
6 DAYS
Series: A Dee Rommel Mystery, Book 5
Genre: Private Investigator Mystery
Release: July 2026
Format: Print, Digital
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop.org
An ethereal beauty, heiress Freya Cummings hasn’t left her private island in Maine for over twenty years, not since she was thirteen. Her reclusive lifestyle is infamous. When a teenager files a maternity suit against her, and mysterious evidence seems damning, former policewoman and now private investigator, Dee Rommel, is hired. She travels up the coast from Portland to flesh out the truth, and as avenues of investigation are shut down, and New England’s blood banks are hacked, and bodies are found, Dee discovers dark secrets can create dangerous chaos for the families and for her own relationships.
About the author
Jule Selbo (juleselbo.com), an award-winning screenwriter and playwright, moved from Los Angeles to Maine to write novels. 6 DAYS, A Dee Rommel Mystery, is the fifth of a crime/mystery series that follows the Kirkus starred ** 10 DAYS and 9 DAYS and 8 DAYS and 7 DAYS. Books in the series have been listed on Kirkus’ Top 5 mysteries from Small Publishers, won the Silver Falchion Award, Honorable Mention Foreword Review and received Clue and Maine Lit Award nominations. And she loves to cook.