A Game Called Dead

Dark stains covered both mattresses where the blood had seeped in. Blankets twisted into loose coils were draped across a corner of one bed, as if rolled again and again as the victim had tried to escape the blows, always moving, always turning, but never escaping. Did the walls contain the screams, suck up the pain like a sponge? Or did the screams slowly fade as the pain increased to numbness only to pool on the floor with the blood while the attacker walked away?

In "A Game Called Dead," Ironton, N.J. Detective Frank Nagler follow a twisting trail of clues that begin in a dorm room at the local college where two young women were beaten.

Soon the bookstore of his blind friend Leonard is ransacked, and a community center for local youths is torched in an arson fire.

Nagler must determine how these events are connected, who is connecting them, and why he seems to be the focus of the actions.

The story introduces #ARMAGEDDON, a self-styled Internet terrorist, Harriet Waddley-Jones, a college dean whose hidden past emerges central to the story, and who is planning a book on Charlie Adams, Ironton's notorious serial killer who makes a stunning court appearance.

To tell that story, Waddley-Jones must get lose to Frank Nagler, who was the detective who solved the Charlie Adams killings.

Soon, she, like many of Nagler's companions find themselves targets.

"A Game Called Dead" is a story of hidden passions and secrets and simmering revenge. The story floats between the actual world and the virtual world created by #ARMAGEDDON.

The story is lyrical and rewarding, told in both tight intimate scenes and broad cinematic strokes.

"A Game Called Dead" is Book 2 in the award-winning Frank Nagler Mystery series.