Hi. I’m Heather.

I write mysteries.

Book 10 of the Alvarez Family Murder Mysteries, Bewitched, Bothered, and Beheaded has been getting great reviews and just won the Readers’ Favorite Bronze Medal for Best Sleuth 2024. I am so grateful.

HEADS-UP! TWISTY PLOTTING, SLY WIT, AND OVER-THE TOP HUMOR AHEAD! In this wacky and hilarious whodunit, private eye Lee Alvarez slips into the role of magician’s assistant for a fundraiser and finds herself dead center in a beyond-grisly murder.

Despite meticulous planning and rehearsal, the magician’s guillotine trick goes as wrong as it possibly can when Lee pulls the cord and shimmies to divert attention from the horrifying fall of the blade. With her back to the guillotine, she’s the last to know of the real-life beheading. But the first to know she’s the number one suspect. In a humiliating turn of events, she’s summarily arrested and booked for the murder.

An easy situation to lose your own head in, but with three days before her arraignment, the entire Alvarez family investigative firm swings into action to save their star.

Luckily for the reader, the unfortunate events are just beginning. The wealthy magician’s beneficiaries immediately begin coming to various sticky ends, including shootings, drownings, kidnappings, and oncoming SUVs. It seems he’s left a chunk of his fortune to a tontine, to be divided among his two ex-wives, current cheating wife, twin nephews, and devoted butler—with the last survivor enjoying the whole income.

Someone evidently can’t keep a cool head on their shoulders.

Fans of PI stories, cozy mysteries, and women sleuths will lose their own heads over Lee Alvarez and her adorable (and vexing) family of investigators, including Tugger the cat! Lee’s sharp and funny like her fellow female protagonists Kinsey Millhone (Sue Grafton) and Stephanie Plum (Janet Evanovich), but she cleans up better – say, Nora to her dapper husband’s Nick. And the rest of the large, loving, interfering, and resourceful Alvarez family will delight lovers of Lisa Lutz’s family series, The Spellman Files.

A Wedding to Die For, Book 2 of The Alvarez Family Murder Mysteries is still under development by a major original programming production company (no names) for a series of television movies. However, my advice to anyone trying to do this is to start when you are very young. It’s been five years in the making with still no signs of going forward, backward or dying. But you know what? The thrill is still there. And I’m still in the game! It’s hard to say how these things go, but the fact that someone wants to turn my stories about the Alvarez family into movies for television makes me jump for joy.

Hotshot Shamus, book 4 of the Persephone Cole Vintage Mysteries, Just won the second place Insipere Award for Best Clean Mystery 2023. Go Percy! Percy Cole is one of the first female detectives in New York City’s history, and a woman very comfortable in a man’s world. It was a joy getting back to this series. Percy’s my kinda gal. Sort of how I’d like to be if I had the nerve.

Lucky me. I get to travel the world in my mind and be all the characters in my books, including the cats! As Confucius once said, “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”

While I love a funny mystery, I tend to read anything of interest to me, especially if it’s well-written. Most of the time, though, when I read a book, I like it to be on the lighter side of life. If I want to cry, I only have to step on a scale. l tend to write about what I consider to be some of the important things in life: the recently immigrated, one of America’s natural resources, the family unit, relationships, and the seeking of justice. They may be wrapped around a mystery and a laugh, but those subjects will always be there.

On my About page find out my favorite books, the first mystery I ever read, and what kickline was singing when I met my real-life hubby.

Or visit my blog below where I muse upon occasion.

Thanks,

Heather

A Mystery Writer’s Musings