Since my marriage to my detective husband, Ross Rierson, my life has been both predictable and off-the-charts edgy. The predictable part comes from the bridge club I run here in my hometown river port of Rosalie, Mississippi. That’s my release because no two bridge games are ever the same.
The edgy part comes in because of my job on the local paper as an investigative reporter. Oh, sure, sometimes I’m doing a deep dive into tax evasion or nepotism in politics, and that’s fairly routine as these things go. But things turn dark when a murder of one of the town’s elite happens occasionally. Ordinary police work doesn’t interest me all that much; even though my father, Bax, is the Chief of Police and keeps trying to get me to join the force. (I prefer brains over bullets every time, though.)
A few years back, four wealthy widows who were members of the exclusive bridge club I was scheduled to join were simultaneously poisoned at one of their bridge luncheons; and I stepped in and did my own investigation for the newspaper while my husband and father handled the official law enforcement business. I’m proud to say that I found justice for the widows and solved the case when the men in my life were stumped.
Since then, I just can’t quit combining my job with helping out in these murders to the legal limits I am allowed. Ross and Bax are both proud of me, and I can’t thank them enough for leaking a few things to me now and then that they probably shouldn’t.
Yesterday, for instance, Ross and I were sitting at the breakfast table, and an invitation was in the stack of mail we were sifting through. Scented, no less, on lavender stock. Turns out one of my bridge pupils and successful real-estate magnate and womanizer, King Kohl, is having another of his bridge extravaganzas. I am going, of course, even though Ross doesn’t play bridge and has never wanted to. And there is no ‘and guest’ on the invitation anyway.
As I write this today, however, I have just received a text from King saying that he is calling off the party and wants me to come to his house at exactly 9:05 to explain why. And he said that I must not be late. So, my investigative reporting instincts have kicked in big-time. Who requests that someone see them at an exact, off-time like that? Why not 9 or 9:30? I already know that something is up, and I have a bad feeling about this.
The King Falls, A Bridge to Death Mystery #4
Genre: Cozy
Release: March 2022
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It’s up to reporter and bridge player Wendy Winchester Rierson to finesse a homicide investigation where the killer holds a master hand . . .
King Kohl, scion of the Kohl and Son real estate firm, has a reputation for loving three things: the ladies, closing on properties, and playing bridge. Still, when he invites Wendy, the president of the Rosalie, Mississippi, Country Club Bridge Bunch, to a small, exclusive bridge party, her investigative instincts as a reporter for the Rosalie Citizen are on the alert. In fact, King means to use the occasion to make a surprising announcement to his selected guests. But before he can lay his cards on the table, tragedy strikes.
After receiving a mysterious message to hurry to King’s home, Wendy almost collides with the man’s real-estate rival, running out the front door insisting he found King dead when he arrived. Not just dead, it turns out, but murdered—crowned with one of his own award plaques.
Is the rival as guilty as he looks? Was it a crime of passion by one of Kohl’s scorned lovers? With her detective husband Ross and her father Bax Winchester, the chief of police, Wendy is determined to find the offender who dropped the unguarded King . . .
About the author
R. J. Lee is the second generation of his family to write mysteries at the New York level. His father, R. Keene Lee, wrote pulp fiction, detective stories for Wings magazine and Fiction House after WWII. R. J. graduated from Sewanee (The University of the South) with a B.A. in English and studied creative writing under Andrew Lytle, editor of the Sewanee Review. His four-novel Bridge To Death Mystery Series for Kensington debuted in 2019. The King Falls, the fourth novel, whose opening plot is described in the last paragraphs above, was released in March, 2022.
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