Coming January 24th, 2023 ––What the Monkey Saw: A Death Doula Novel. Pre-order your copy now! Preorder link is in the photo.
How far would you go to help the ones you love?
After leaving the FBI, former agent Emily Gayle now makes her living watching people die. Consumed with guilt for leaving her ambushed partner to die alone, Emily returns home to the Appalachian Mountains to serve her self-imposed penitence for a non-profit organization as a death doula. Palm-to-palm like she was trained, Emily sits with the dying and holds their hand because no one should die alone.
Wanting some quick cash, Jude Courtland along with his younger brother and cousin begin hijacking pharmaceutical vans to sell the stolen insulin to a black-market buyer. Jude hopes to steal enough of the drug to cover the cost of his widowed grandmother, Hazel’s, chemo.
Fresh off a 36-hour traditional mountain wake, Emily meets her new assignment. Hazel Courtland and her grandsons.
As Emily and Hazel bond, the hijackings, and Emily’s suspicions escalate until they explode in tragedy. Emily’s faced with a decision that would shatter Hazel’s dying heart or destroy her own future. If she lives long enough to have one.
A stunning portrait of small town crime, reminiscent of S.A. Cosby where the moral lines aren’t so straight and there’s always more more score. With memorable characters, crisp pacing and a twisty plot, you’ll want to know What the Monkey Saw.
James L’Etoile, Award winning author of Black Label, Dead Drop, and the Detective Penley series
As in the best crime fiction, Lynn Chandler Willis’s What the Monkey Saw is about far more than the crimes committed, in this case the hijacking of insulin deliveries in Appalachia. Through the plot of a heist novel, Willis demonstrates how some people respond to the twin pressures of poverty and illness by breaking the law, and she accomplishes this without either glamorizing the crimes or condescending to her characters. Ultimately, What the Monkey Saw stands out as an exploration of death and dying, and how we react to both: the avoidance, the denial of loss, and the acceptance and grief that wash over us like mountain rain, either drowning us or bringing the promise of brighter days just over the next ridge.
Christopher Swann
2022 Georgia Author of the Year (Detective/Mystery)
Author of Never Go Home, A Fire in the Night, and Never Turn Back
christopherswann.com
This tale, ripe and deep with the Appalachian experience, makes us feel sorry for the bad guys and better understand how some people make ends meet to get by. The struggle of living is real. The crime is ugly in some ways and needed in others. Combine all this with Emily Gayle’s deep-seeded struggle to overcome her trauma and reluctance to use her investigative prowess and you have a solid, multi-layered, intriguing mystery that still warms your heart, even amidst the hardness of Appalachian living.
C. Hope Clark, award-winning author of The Edisto Island Mysteries, The Carolina Slade Mysteries, and The Craven County Mysteries. www.chopeclark.com
Coming November 2023 –– What Happened on Day 63: A Death Doula Novel
What happens when the line between right and wrong blurs?
Coming November 2024 –– What They Put in the Water: A Death Doula Novel
Greed, betrayal, and water make for a deadly cocktail.