Molly Blume Series

For feisty Los Angeles crime reporter Molly Blume, life is good. She is newly married (to the adoring and adorable Rabbi Zack), and her latest true-crime book is a hot seller. However, when an overardent fan’s attentions arouse Molly’s suspicion, her thoughts turn uneasily to stalkers.

But the fan, Reuben Jastrow, swears that he desperately needs Molly’s help in finding his eighteen-year-old daughter, Hadassah, who has run away from home to be with a man she met on the Internet. Molly hesitantly agrees–and immediately has regrets. For Reuben hasn’t told her the whole truth. The more Molly looks for clues to the missing girl’s fate, the more she wonders: Is Hadassah a random victim of a predator, or is the girl a pawn in a scheme of revenge against her family?

It’s a long, deadly path that stretches before Molly, a path mined with hidden passions and festering secrets. And it ends with a final twist and an unnerving truth: What we don’t see can lead to danger . . . and tragedy.

Tuesday, February 17. 11:40 a.m., Corner of Vermont Avenue and Sunset Boulevard. A robber approached the victim from behind and put a knife to her stomach. . . .

Stabbings, even fatal ones, are not uncommon in Los Angeles. But the stabbing death of Aggie Lasher–a vibrant young woman dedicated to helping others and, it seemed, deeply loved by everyone who knew her–was especially tragic. For almost six years she has been obsessed by the mystery of her best friend’s murder: If she had been with Aggie, would the killer have chosen another victim? Will the killer ever be caught?

When Molly’s LAPD pal Detective Andy Connors shows her a locket found on the body of a dead man, suddenly the case seems solved. Molly had given that locket to Aggie. Still coiled inside it is the red-thread good-luck charm that Molly had brought back years ago from Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem, a thread with the reputed mystical power to protect its wearer.

The presumed murderer–a good-looking aspiring actor named Randy Creeley–was found dead of an overdose in his shabby Hollywood apartment. But Molly has unanswered questions. And though she should be focused on her wedding, only weeks away, she is driven to find out more–about Creeley; about his nervous sister, Trina; about his missing girlfriend, Doreen. About Aggie, who, it turns out, didn’t tell her best friend everything. The more Molly discovers, the more she wonders: Was Aggie’s life snuffed out so an addict could shoot up? Or has Creeley been framed? What if Aggie was deliberately murdered by someone else, someone who is ready to kill again to ensure that his motives stay buried with Aggie and Randy Creeley?
Molly’s search for the truth sends her scurrying for answers in an L.A. tourists seldom see. But closure is elusive, and seeking it can exact a stiff price–sometimes even a life.

Rochelle Krich’s third Molly Blume mystery is irresistible: an inexorably compelling chiller.

DREAM HOUSE
A Novel of Suspense

Rochelle Krich
National bestselling author of Blues in the Night

Friday, October 31. 9:37 P.M., 100 block of South Martel. A vandal threw a pumpkin through the front window of a house and several eggs at the front door.

The police report read like just another Halloween prank–a nasty, petty act. But the attack is one in a recent spate of increasingly violent vandalisms targeting residents who have paid millions of dollars for their dream homes in the ritziest enclaves of Los Angeles.

Residents are already seething, hotly divided about the growing number of Historical Architectural Restoration and Preservation (HARP) boards that prevent homeowners from remodeling their expensive real estate, forcing them to preserve the traditional integrity of neighborhoods where Hollywood legends once lived. So impassioned are pro-and anti-HARP forces that Crime Sheet columnist Molly Blume suspects that members from both side of the debate may perpetrating the vandalism that claims new victims almost daily.

But the arson that destroys an empty house on Fuller Street doesn’t fit the pattern. This beautiful property belongs to Margaret Reston and her husband, Hank; and the sick old man who dies when it burns is Margaret’s father. Margaret herself has disappeared. She was last seen working in her garden five months ago–and although traces of her blood were found in her car, the police have no idea what has happened to the missing woman.

This intrigue all makes good copy for hard-hitting newshound Molly. Almost in love again with the high-school sweetheart who dumped her and is now a rabbi, Molly can’t stop thinking about Margaret and Hank Reston and the old man whose life was tragically, though accidentally, cut short. But was it an accident? What has happened to Margaret Reston? Where does malice end and evil begin?

In her second Molly Blume chiller, award-winning novelist Rochelle Krich takes us right inside L.A.’s most exclusive neighborhoods and into the elegant old houses whose wrought-iron fences and barred windows offer scant protection from violence. Even in a dream house, life can turn nightmarish in a heartbeat.

Rochelle Krich is the author of many acclaimed novels of suspense, including Blues in the Night (which introduced Molly Blume), Shadows of Sin, Dead Air, Blood Money, and Fertile Ground. An Anthony Award winner for her debut novel, Where’s Mommy Now? (which was adapted as the TV movie Perfect Alibi), Ms. Krich now lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their children.

Visit Rochelle Krich’s Web site at www.rochellekrich.com
Praise for Rochelle Krich and Blues in the Night

“Blues in the Night is superb. . . . Molly Blume is a fresh new presence on the mystery scene. . . . Smart, resourceful, and curious–not much escapes her.”
–SUE GRAFTON

“One of America’s finest suspense novelists.”
–CAROLYN HART

“Molly investigates with both thoroughness and compassion, making this new sleuth worth her salt.”
–The New York Times Book Review

“An authentic, first-rate book . . . [that] demonstrates once again why she has won for herself an important place in the pantheon of outstanding mystery writers.”
–Jerusalem Post

“Smoothly written . . . A charming new series . . . Skillfully plotted, with a satisfying solution.”
–Milwaukee Journal

“An unqualified winner.”
–Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

Sunday, July 13. 1:46 A.M. Near Lookout Mountain and Laurel Canyon. An unidentified woman in her twenties, wearing a nightgown, was the victim of a hit-and-run accident that left her unconscious and seriously injured. There were no witnesses.

So reads the report on the accident off Mulholland Drive in Molly Blume’s Crime Sheet column for a weekly Los Angeles tabloid. Just another small L.A. tragedy, soon forgotten.

But the image of the young woman in her nightgown stumbling along a dark, winding road is one Molly, a freelance true-crime writer, cannot shake. In fact, it draws her to a bedside in intensive care, where the victim whispers to her three names: Robbie, Max, and Nina. It’s not a smoking gun, but is sufficient to reinforce Molly’s gut instinct that there are sinister circumstances behind the assault on Lenore Saunders.

With fearless conviction, Molly asks questions that nobody—including Lenore’s mom, her ex-husband, her shrink, or even Molly’s L.A.P.D. buddy, Detective Connors—wants to answer. Nevertheless, the astute Molly discovers Lenore lived a fractured life, so different from Molly’s own secure and loving Orthodox Jewish background. And as a chilling picture of the unfortunate woman begins to take shape, the menace of murders past and present stirs and quickens.

In her first Molly Blume novel, award-winning novelist Rochelle Krich tells a story in the tradition of the great L.A. mysteries of the past—and introduces an investigator who is pure gold. Twentysomething divorcee Molly Blume, with her deep faith, short skirts, and nose for the truth, is a heroine to cherish.