About the book

Fire takes everything a walk needs. This time, Iris Stellick has to do it the hard way.

It's August in Tallow, there's a heat wave, and the county fair is lit up on the river flat. On Saturday, Iris met the carnival's chief ride mechanic: Calla Stroud, a show-born welder who swore the big wheel had a voice and you could hear it getting sick. By Tuesday, Calla's trailer is a burned-out shell behind the midway, and its door was locked from the outside.

Fire destroys walks. For the first time, night death investigator Iris Stellick has almost nothing to go on but her training, what the fire left behind and a carnival family closing ranks. Her brother Wes, running the generators on the midway that week, has started hearing the dead places too. And Detective Theo Castellanos, working beside her in the open at last, is keeping one thing from her.

Iris gets a single damaged chance, ninety seconds long, inside the night Calla died. It points her the right way. It also shows her to the killer.

Before Calla Stroud Died is the third Iris Stellick Thriller.

What to expect

A new murder case, closed in this book
A killer who can see the woman hunting him
A slow-burn partnership that takes its next step

Closed-door romance: slow-burn tension and a first kiss, with no on-page sex. Contains suspense, murder, arson, menace and non-graphic violence.

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