When Murder Comes Knocking!
As a crime fiction writer, it is not very often that the gnarled hand of murder comes knocking at my front door. I don’t mean a fictional murder. I mean a real, true crime murder.
Wait. No, I wasn’t the intended victim... but please let me explain.
Before I became a crime fiction writer, I was a family law attorney. My law practice was in New York’s Hudson Valley, an idyllic region of horse farms, robber baron mansions, and a bustling river with a very dark underbelly. In 1985, my business partner and I purchased a building for our law offices, which had been abandoned and in foreclosure for many years. During the vacancy period, the porch of our brick Tudor-style building had become a gathering spot for “the ladies of the evening.” Apparently, the women found it convenient to ply their trade across the street in an isolated parking structure.
Unfortunately, the ladies viewed our porch as their own office and created problems for us by soliciting our clients on the way into our office. Naturally, this was embarrassing, and they were quite persistent despite our requests to “move along, please.” My partner and I constantly called the police for help, but to no avail. Gradually, one-by-one the ladies vanished. We were relieved, believing the police had prevailed. However, one day, the headlines of our local newspaper revealed the more grisly truth.
To our shock, a serial killer named Kendall Francois had been arrested in connection with the disappearances of eight prostitutes in the City of Poughkeepsie. He had been soliciting these women from our front steps, had taken them to his home, and no one heard from them again. His killings had occurred over a two-year period, and ultimately, the judge found him guilty of seven counts of murder. Francois was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole.
As a crime fiction writer, true crime stories like this one are manna from heaven. My front office steps served as the actual scene of the crime and formed the basis for my multi-award-winning sophomore mystery, “Hooker Avenue.”
In my novel, my protagonists, attorney Jessie Martin and her estranged best friend, Detective Ebony Jones, are on the hunt of a series of missing prostitutes after a severely battered woman escapes from the clutches of a deranged John. The police have not investigated the disappearances because they have occurred throughout the Hudson Valley and there appears to be no connection between the cases. As a result, the cases have grown arctic cold. Only the unreliable witness, the surviving prostitute, can lead my heroines to solve the mystery of the missing women and seek justice against the man who brutally injured her.
Detective Jones, haunted by the memories of her own missing aunt, and Jessie, who seeks professional redemption, find themselves on opposite sides of the law. Ebony seeks to solve the crime, and Jessie seeks to protect her client, the survivor. The two childhood friends face a balancing act of conflicting professions, which creates an insurmountable tension in their personal relationship.
I am proud that Hooker Avenue was a Finalist for the RWA/KOD Daphne DuMaurier Award for Excellence in Mystery/Suspense, a Finalist for the Silver Falchion Award, and a winner of the Best Police Procedural Clue Award. And it is part of the Clue Award winning The Queen City Crimes series.
Local crimes with which I possess a connection similarly inspired the two other novels comprising the Queen City Crimes series. The Midnight Call was inspired by my high school history teacher who murdered a student, and an internationally renown drowning on the Hudson River inspired The Empty Kayak. Each true Hudson Valley crime has formed the basis for mysteries emphasizing how tragedy affects the survivors in a small community. Further, how friendship can be tested by our dedication to our professions.
So, for me, when crime comes knocking at my door, I always answer.
Hooker Avenue
A Queen City Crime Novel, Book 3
Being a Good Samaritan can be deadly.
Single mom and attorney Jessie Martin learns that lesson the hard way.
During a violent spring thunderstorm, Jessie discovers an unconscious woman lying in a roadside ditch and dials 911 for help. Little does she know her compassion will propel her on a collision course with her estranged best friend, Detective Ebony Jones...and one of the most shocking mysteries in the Hudson Valley.
The badly beaten victim, Lissie Sexton, is a prostitute who claims she’s escaped from the clutches of a killer. She’s also a client of Jessie’s new boss, and former nemesis, Jeremy Kaplan, and fearing for Lissie’s life, he hides her away from everyone.
Ebony is investigating a series of cold cases, and the missing women’s profiles bear a striking resemblance to Lissie’s. She’s willing to stake her career on the hunch that the battered sex worker is the key to solving the serial crimes. However, Jessie is the major obstacle to her investigation—she won’t give up Lissie’s location.
Jessie’s in a bind. She wants to help Ebony, but she can’t compromise her client, her boss, or her legal ethics.
To catch the killer, can Jessie and Ebony put aside their past? Can they persuade Lissie to identify her assailant before he strikes again on Hooker Avenue?
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