Angelhart Investigations

New Series Alert

When I first sold, I worried that I wouldn’t have enough ideas to write about. But pretty quickly I realized that I had too many ideas, and needed to discern how to pick which ideas I wanted to spend months researching, writing, and editing … and which ideas of those that people would enjoy reading.

For many years, I’d wanted to write a series about a private investigator. The reason? PIs can do things that cops can’t; there are different types of stories and crimes I can explore with a PI that I can’t with a detective or FBI agent. And, I wanted to write about people who might not go to the police, or where the crime angle wasn’t clear, or where there is a morally gray area that I can explore — such as doing the wrong thing for the right reason.

But there are lots of books about private investigators, and I didn’t have an idea that took my vague thoughts and gave them focus, so the PI stories went on the back burner.

Photo by Joe Cook on Unsplash

We moved to Phoenix in 2019. I’d written one Quinn & Costa book set outside Tucson, Arizona before we moved (TELL NO LIES), and I wrote THE SORORITY MURDER after we moved, set in Flagstaff. I’ve grown to love Arizona in ways I never expected, so started looking for story ideas that would be best told here.

One day, I went to court with my oldest daughter, a Phoenix PD officer. It was a personal matter she was dealing with and I went as moral support (she prevailed). I also went to observe the court process because all these little “field trips” help inform my books.

The judge who presided that day was retired, but was taking cases to clear the COVID-era backlog. After, when it was just him, Katie, and me, I asked a few questions because he was a very interesting guy. Before I knew it, I had his entire history — including the fact that his family came from a long-line of Mexican-Americans. His grandparents had been married at St. Mary’s Basilica in downtown Phoenix. He talked about the changes in cases over his years as a judge.

By the time I walked out of that courtroom, it clicked. I wanted to write about a family of private investigators set in Phoenix. Not one PI — no lone wolf — but a group of people who loved each other, even when they disagreed. The patriarch — the grandfather — of the family was a retired judge. The immediate family members were all in different areas of public service before becoming private investigators, and they all left public service for different reasons.

The Angelhart Family was born.

While the series centers on the middle child Margo Angelhart, her siblings are equally — or near-equally — as important. Margo chose me. She’s smart, determined, sometimes rash, and very loyal. She’s an optimistic cynic, and I wanted to explore that conflict within her.

Into the Fire is a prequel novella that explains how Margo decided to be a private investigator. It introduces the family nearly 8 years before the events in the book You’ll Never Find Me.

INTO THE FIRE, an Angelhart Investigations novella, on sale now

In the novella, a prosecutor friend of Margo’s asks her to prove a 19-year-old confessed killer is innocent. Margo doesn’t even know if she wants to be a PI, but she agrees to help … and through the process, realizes that there are some people who can’t — or won’t — go to the police for help. There are some people who need an advocate to help them solve very real problems.

Readers have reached out about whether the novella must be read before the book. The answer is NO. I wrote the novella long after I finished the book. The novella is a small taste of what the series is about, and introduces the people who are important to Margo. But there is nothing in the novella that you have to know before you read the book. It’s truly a prequel, like an episode of television that focuses on the backstory of one of the characters. The novella is a digital first story that will likely be released in print at a later date — similar to the three novellas in the Lucy Kincaid series that made of MISSING. But as I’ve told my readers over the years, when I write a novella in a series that is released in ebook first, I write them as a stand alone story. Yes, the same characters, but without continuing storylines — I don’t want anyone to think they “missed” something. (Though of course, I hope you read all the stories in the series!)

The novella is, ultimately, a way to bring in new readers to the series, both before and after the book comes out. For all the links, go to my website.

Next week, I’ll share the “Story Behind the Story” of You’ll Never Find Me, which goes on sale June 25th! (You can check out all the links at my website.)

I love the Angelhart family, and hope you love them too.

You’ll Never Find Me, on sale June 25th!