I’m up at 5 AM every day and do yoga while the coffee is brewing. After breakfast on non-trial days, I pull on my jeans and a long-sleeved t-shirt or turtleneck, depending on the season. Lots of lawyers in Anchorage wear jeans to the office. What’s the point of moving to Alaska if you’re going to act like you’re living in L.A.?
At the office, I put on more coffee, check my e-mail and my voice messages, respond to them, finishing up just about the time Mike Dimitri, and his golden retriever, Sam, come in. Mike, the guy from across the hall, is what we called “dreamy” in high school. He has black curly hair, deep brown eyes with thick fringes of curly eyelashes, dark skin, and a lazy white smile. One side of his mouth goes up before the other one. He wears jeans, a flannel shirt and hiking boots, and has a soft east coast accent. (Almost everyone in Alaska is from somewhere else.)
Mike and I drink coffee, gossip about other lawyers, talk about our cases and then he leaves before my investigator shows up. They don’t get along.
My investigator, Tom Sinclair, has been with me since the beginning. I met him at my first job, fresh out of law school. We worked together for years, trying felony cases. It was Tom who got me into rehab. When I came back, the public defender, my ex-boyfriend Addison Royce, wouldn’t let me try cases anymore – he said I was unreliable because I’d gone to rehab without giving notice. So, I quit the PD’s. Tom quit too. I think he felt bad since he was the one who insisted I go to rehab in the first place.
So here we are in private practice in an oversized two-room office overlooking Fourth Avenue, Anchorage, Alaska, staring straight into the district attorney’s office building.
Tom rolls in around 10 AM, pours himself the last of the coffee, and I make another pot. He’s six feet two inches tall of granite and gristle, with an Idaho hillbilly accent. He doesn’t have a desk – he doesn’t want one. Instead, he parks himself in my visitor chair and we talk about what he did the night before and what’s happened at the office since I last saw him. Then we make plans for the day, and he leaves.
I hang out at the office until 4 PM, then go to the gym. Then I go home to either a three hundred calorie microwave dinner or a pint of double chocolate ice cream. It depends on how the day went. Then I read murder mysteries and fall asleep on the couch with the lights on, just like when I was drinking. One of these days, I’m going to learn how to go to bed like a normal person.
You can read more about Maeve in Deadly Solution, the first book in the NEW “Maeve Malloy” mystery series.
Maeve Malloy makes her first appearance in Deadly Solution. Less than a year after drinking sidelined her career as a public defender in Anchorage, Alaska, Maeve Malloy is asked to defend an Aleut Indian accused of beating another homeless man to death. With no witnesses to the crime and a client who claims to have no knowledge of the night of the murder due to a blackout, the case is stacked against them.
As Maeve works to maintain her sobriety, she and her investigator Tom Sinclair search for answers in homeless camps, roadside bars, and biker gang hangouts. When they uncover more than a few people with motives all their own for wanting the victim dead, they are determined to prove their client’s innocence before he is sentenced to a life behind bars for a crime he swears he didn’t commit.
When Maeve and Tom discover there may be a link to an unusually high number of deaths among the homeless community, the search is on for a killer hunting among the most vulnerable members of society.
Giveaway: Leave a comment below for the chance to win a e-copy (Kindle or Nook) of Deadly Solution. The giveaway will end January 25, 2018. Good luck everyone!
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Meet the author
Keenan Powell was born in Roswell, New Mexico, several years after certain out-of-towners visited. Her first artistic endeavor was drawing, which led to illustrating the original Dungeons and Dragons when still in high school.
A past winner of the William F. Deeck-Malice Domestic grant, her publications include Criminal Law 101 in the June 2015 issue of The Writer magazine and several short stories. She writes the legal column, Ipso Facto, for the Guppies’ newsletter, First Draft, and blogs with the Mysteristas.
She lives, and practices law, in Anchorage, Alaska. When not writing or lawyering, she can be found riding her bike, hanging out with her Irish Wolfhound, studying the concert harp, or dinking around with oil paints.
Visit Keenan at her website keenanpowellauthor.com and on Facebook.
All comments are welcomed.
Congratulations on the new book, Keenan! I’m looking forward to reading it. Thanks for the chance to win.
Thanks, Barb. You are on the list! My method of random selection is: I put a list of names in front of my grandson, who doesn’t know anyone, and he points at one.
Very diplomatic.
Sounds intriguing! Congratulations on the new series!
Thanks, Micki! It’s an exciting day for me.
This sounds like a series & author I would like. Thanks for the great post.
Thanks, Doward! Glad you enjoy the post.
This sounds very interesting. I love learning about new places and different peoples by reading Mysteries. Can’t wait!
Thanks, Amy! Alaska is a wild and wonderful place, as are its people.
Wow, this reads like a very promising series! I definitely want to read and would love to win!
Thanks, Kimberly! Your name is in the hat!
Congratulations! Looking forward to reading!
Thanks, Angie! Hope you like it!
I love your blog since you introduce new authors to me and their books. It was wonderful to read your review of Keenan Powell’s book and she has been added to my list of new authors to check out.
Robin: Deadly Solution is the first of a series. I hope you enjoy it.
Congratulations, Keenan! I can’t wait to dig into my copy!
Thanks, Liz! Hope you enjoy it. The story wouldn’t let me go.
Happy book birthday, Keenan! So excited for this one–already bought and am impatiently waiting for my copy to arrive.
Thanks, Cynthia, my Deeck grant buddy. I hope you enjoy it!
It’s a good think Maeve does yoga every morning. Falling asleep on the couch every night is hard on the body.
Oh yeah, sleeping on the couch is hard on the body. Couches aren’t designed for it and it wears them out prematurely. I can’t do it anymore.
This book sounds great and I’ve already clicked over and got a copy for my Kindle. Love the description of the main characters and I’ll look forward to reading it soon. Wow – Roswell to Anchorage – now that’s two different settings – LOL! We vacation often in Ruidoso and travel through Roswell. Our trip from Central Texas to the mountains of NM is rather dull-ish, but then you get to Roswell and then you can see the mountains in the distance. Good luck on your book, Keenan! Hope to see you at Malice later this spring!
Thanks, Kay! I drove through Roswell in 1980 during a journey to pick a new place to go. (In ’81, I came to Anchorage and picked it.) I was trying to find the quonset hut that I was born in. (Poor Mom!) It’s a savagely beautiful place.
Wow! Sounds like a great new series and it’s on my wish list.
Keenan, you sound like a woman I’d love to know. We spent quite a bit of time in Roswell in the 90’s (vacation destination) and were lucky enough to take a family trip to Alaska in 2013. Both places are intriguing and fantastic!
Thanks for the new read, and a chance to win the book.
Thanks for the comments, Kay K. You’re entered in the drawing!
Huge congrats on Deadly Solutions and the launch of this awesome-sounding new series, Keenan! Can’t wait to meet Maeve!
Thanks so much, Lisa!
Sounds like a great start to a new series. Really enjoyed the description of the book, looking forward to reading.
Thanks, Dianne. I’m excited about this series; there is so much in Alaska to talk about.
This sounds like a great new series; my interest is definitely piqued. Thanks for the opportunity to win; enjoy discovering new authors.
Thanks for you kind comments, MaryAnn. You’re entered in the drawing.
Congratulations, MaryAnn Forbes! You have won the drawing for an e-copy of DEADLY SOLUTION. Please send your e-mail to me at: keenan@gci.net.