My name is Mikki Lincoln and I call myself the Write Right Wright because Grammar Guru was already taken. I’m what is popularly known as a book doctor, although I don’t care for that term myself. I prefer freelance editor. That’s how I earn a little extra to pay the bills now that I’m retired.

I’m not charging for the work I agreed to do for the Lenape Hollow Historical Society. Egged on by comments about my lack of civic pride, I agreed to take a look at the script for a pageant presented at the village’s bicentennial. A look. That’s all. To see if it could be adapted for the quasquibicentennial—that’s the 225th anniversary of the founding of our little corner of the foothills of the Catskill Mountains of New York State. I should have known better. Editing alone won’t do the trick and somehow I ended up in charge of producing an entirely new script in time for the beginning of rehearsals. At the same time, I’m trying to figure out who murdered the author of the original pageant.

Did I mention that I was at the historical society when the body was found?

No one even knew Grace Yarrow was missing. She disappeared just before her opus was performed and everyone thought she’d been lured away by the bright lights of Broadway. Twenty-five years later, the truth came out. Now I’m asking questions about the crime, but the answers I’m getting range from juicy details I’d just as soon not know, to misinformation based on faulty memories, to outright lies.

With the help of others on the pageant-writing committee—my best friend Darlene, my old enemy Ronnie, and eighty-five-year-old Sunny—and with my cat, Calpurnia, to use as a sounding board, I think I may be able to figure out who dunnit. The tricky part will be keeping that person from knowing I’m getting close. I may be doing the same job Grace Yarrow did a quarter of a century ago, but the last thing I want is to end up the way she did.

You can read more about Mikki in Clause & Effect, the second book in the “Deadly Edits” cozy mystery series, released June 25, 2019.

As a professional editor, Mikki Lincoln is used to crimes against the English language. As an amateur sleuth, she’s finding catching criminals a lot more dangerous than catching typos . . .

Nestled in the picturesque Catskills, the village of Lenape Hollow prepares to celebrate the 225th anniversary of its founding. Freelance book editor Mikki Lincoln has been drafted to update and correct the script, left over from the town’s bicentennial, which is housed at the historical society.

The building is being renovated for the first time since that last celebration. But when construction reveals a shocking discovery—human remains walled up in a fireplace—Mikki shifts focus from cold-reading to solving a cold case.

Just as her investigation seems to have hit a brick wall, a new murder rattles the townspeople. Clearly, someone is hiding a few skeletons in the closet. Now Mikki will need to go off script to make a connection between the bicentennial bones and the current homicide. But if this book editor isn’t careful, she may be the next one sentenced to death . . .

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About the author
With the June 2019 publication of the second “Deadly Edits” mystery featuring Mikki Lincoln, Clause & Effect, Kaitlyn Dunnett will have had a total of sixty books traditionally published. Under her real name, Kathy Lynn Emerson, she won the Agatha Award and was an Anthony and Macavity finalist for best mystery nonfiction of 2008 for How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries and was an Agatha Award finalist in 2015 in the best mystery short story category. She was the Malice Domestic Guest of Honor in 2014. Currently she also writes the Liss MacCrimmon Mysteries as Kaitlyn and her most recent book as Kathy is a collection of short stories, Different Times, Different Crimes. Her websites are kaitlyndunnett.com and kathylynnemerson.com and she maintains a website about women who lived in England between 1485 and 1603 at A Who’s Who of Tudor Women.

All comments are welcomed.