Chameleon
by Shirley Kennett
from Pinnacle
P.J. Gray, a single mother whose move from high-powered market research to police work as a St. Louis forensic psychologist was chronicled in Shirley Kennett's earlier novel Gray Matter, is back in a new high-tech thriller. This time P.J. and her rumpled, rule-breaking partner Leo Schultz are up against a sadistic killer who's preying on the faculty of Deaver Junior High School--coincidentally, the same school where P.J.'s son Thomas is a seventh grader. While her innovative virtual reality program can reconstruct the grisly crimes so P.J. can see the murders from the victim's point of view or even the killer's, it can't reveal what Schultz grasps intuitively and the reader understands before the killer strikes a second time: the perpetrator is a sadist who's equal to P.J. in his command of a deranged cyberworld. With his computer tools, he rehearses his bloody scenarios before he carries them out. Meanwhile, a year-old unsolved art-gallery murder and a slowly flowering romance between P.J. and the father of Thomas's best friend (or is it between P.J. and her irascible partner?) keep the reader's interest from flagging while the cybernetics-generated central plot unfolds. Fans of Kennett's previous P.J. Gray suspense novels will appreciate the literary multitasking in Cameleon. --Jane Adams
Time of Death
by Shirley Kennett
from Five Star
The mutilated body on the St. Louis riverfront is just the beginning. PJ Gray, psychologist and expert in forensic virtual reality, has her hands full when the Metro Mangler claims more victims. As the case heats up, so do her feelings for her partner, Detective Leo Schultz. They're like bolts of lightning that sizzle and hiss the closer they get, swept up in a relationship that is more force of nature than emotional state. PJ crawls into the murderer's mind by experiencing the killings in virtual reality. Schultz relies on a cop's instincts. Neither of them can solve the baffling deaths. If they're all connected, then there are two types of murders: one intensely personal and bloody, the other quick and efficient. Two killers, or one killer with different motivations? It's a profiler's nightmare. As a wealthy family's secrets unravel and a thirty-year-old murder comes to light, PJ is suddenly in danger of crossing the line from investigator to victim.
Shirley Kennett is a member of International Thriller Writers, Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and the American Crime Writers League. She lives with her husband, two sons, and several cats in the St. Louis metropolitan area.
Burning Rose
by Shirley Kennett
from Five Star Trade
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