Cold Kill

Eva Matthews is a middle-aged detective on the verge of resigning after years of being undervalued by the men in her small-town Wisconsin police department.  When a Bahraini-born civil engineering professor, Ali Hussain, is shot at close range in his home, Eva’s supposed last case finds her teamed up with a passionate state investigator, a State Department aide, a local historian, and a talented young police officer.  The novel takes multiple points of view on the high intensity investigation and fallout of Ali’s death— that of Eva, Ali’s wife, Ali’s department chair, and Ali’s teenaged stalker.  Is Ali’s prior political repression in Bahrain, his identity as a foreigner, or his involvement in local activism the cause of his murder?  Can anyone hold it together long enough to get to the bottom of it?  As the case spins into high emotion and further violence, it keeps Eva on the job far longer than she may be able to bear.  

Novel length: approximately 107,000 words

Genre: mystery, police procedural

Time period: the novel takes place in January of 2020