Spotlight of Cheater by Karen Rose

PHOTO SOURCE:
TYPORAMA
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CHEATER

KAREN ROSE

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ALL INFORMATION IN THIS POST IS COURTESY OF STEPHANIE FELTY, ASSOCIATE PUBLICIST | BERKLEY & ACE | PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE

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A must-read for fans of Lisa Gardner and Tami Hoag, the San Diego Case Files by New York Times bestselling author Karen Rose are high-octane romantic suspense novels full of sun, surf, sand…and serial killers.

The first series installment, Cold-Blooded Liar, was praised as “an un-put-downable romantic thriller” (Publishers Weekly) and selected as one of Amazon’s best suspense novels of 2023.

In book two, CHEATER, the slow-burn romance building between a detective and a criminal psychologist ignites as they must work together to solve a shocking murder case.

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March 26, 2024

Berkley Hardcover

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PRAISE FOR KAREN ROSE:

“Effortlessly balances romance and crime…an excellent example of how far-reaching and varied romance can be. The plot is complex, the characterization sound and the boundaries of the genre pushed.”—The New York Times

“The kind of high-wire suspense that keeps you riveted.”—New York Times bestselling author Lisa Gardner

 

“Karen Rose owns this genre-she combines an accurate, vivid sense of place with believable, sympathetic characters.”—Criminal Element on Cold-Blooded Liar

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EXCERPT OF CHEATER:

CHEATER by Karen Rose

Berkley Hardcover | On sale March 26, 2024

Excerpt

Chapter One

Shady Oaks Retirement Village
Scripps Ranch, San Diego, California
Monday, November 7, 11:20 a.m.

Kit McKittrick allowed herself a moment to feel pity as she stood over the body of the elderly man lying dead on his apartment floor in the Shady Oaks Retirement Village. Then she squared her shoulders and proceeded to do her job.

The mood in the dead man's living room was subdued. The ME was examining the body while CSU took photos and Latent dusted for prints, but there was little of the normal scene-of-the-crime chatter to which Kit had become accustomed in the four and a half years she'd been in Homicide.

Everyone spoke in hushed whispers, like they were in church. Because it kind of felt like they were. Haunting melancholy music from a single piano was coming from the speaker mounted on the victim's living room wall. The music wasn't loud, but it was overwhelming nonetheless. Kit wanted to turn it off, because the music was so sad that it made her chest hurt and her eyes burn.

But neither the speaker nor its volume controls had been dusted for prints, so she couldn't touch it yet. Until then, she could only square her shoulders, ignore the music, and focus on getting justice for Mr. Franklin Delano Flynn.

The cause of death of the eighty-five-year-old white male was most likely the butcher knife still embedded in his chest. But she'd learned long ago not to assume. Still, a butcher knife to the chest was never good. It was a long wound, the gash in the man's white button-up shirt extending from his sternum to his navel. Whoever had killed him had to have had a lot of strength to create such a wound.

The victim had been dead long enough for his blood to dry, both the blood that had soaked the front of his shirt and the blood that had pooled on the floor around his torso.

His eyes, filmy in death, stared sightlessly up at the ceiling. His arms lay at his sides, his hands slightly curved. Not quite flat, but not quite fists, either. It wasn't a natural pose for the victim of a homicide who'd fallen after being stabbed. She wondered if his killer had repositioned his arms.

Mr. Flynn had been a hardy man, broad-shouldered, tall, and still muscular. Not in bad shape for eighty-five, she thought. He wore dark trousers, the pockets turned out, as if he'd been searched.

His shoes were black oxfords, buffed to such a shine that she could nearly see her own reflection. She wondered if he'd come home, surprising his attacker, or if he'd welcomed his killer into his home.

His living room had been ransacked, books knocked off shelves, knickknacks strewn on the floor. The sofa cushions had been slashed open, foam stuffing on the floor as well. The man's bedroom was in a similar state. The drawers in the kitchen had been opened and emptied, their contents dumped on the counters. Flour and sugar containers had been dumped on the kitchen's tiled floor. Someone had been looking for something and had left a terrible mess.

Kit wondered if they'd found what they'd been looking for. She wondered if Mr. Flynn had fought back.

Kit crouched on the victim's right side, leaning in so that she could better examine his hands. The knuckles of his right hand were scraped and bruised, but his fingernails were what caught her attention. They were mostly gone, clipped way past the quick, down into the nail bed.

That he'd fought back was a decent assumption, then. His killer hadn't wanted any evidence to be found under the man's nails.

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Excerpted from Cheater by Karen Rose Copyright © 2024 by Karen Rose. Excerpted by permission of Berkley. All rights reserved.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Karen Rose is the award-winning, #1 international bestselling author of more than 25 novels, including the bestselling Baltimore and Cincinnati series.

She has been translated into twenty-three languages, and her books have placed on the New York Times, the Sunday Times (UK), and Germany's der Spiegel bestseller lists.

**AUTHOR PHOTO TAKEN FROM HER AMAZON BOOK PAGE**

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