CASEY JONES SERIES
Meet Casey Jones — an unlicensed, no-nonsense private detective who hides 160 pounds of muscle with an in-your-face femme fatale style. She’s bold, she’s bad, and most of all, she’s nobody’s fool. Underneath her wisecracking 100% Southern exterior, there beats a 14-carat heart with a definite soft spot for life’s losers. With the brains to take on any challenge and the guts to impose her own brand of justice, Casey Jones has what it takes to be your best friend or your very worst enemy. She wouldn’t be caught dead whining over a lousy boyfriend or asking for help. She’s too busy lifting weights, running off at the mouth, and making doughnut runs for her overstuffed business partner, the larger-than-life Bobby D, a 360-pound Lothario whose little black book is almost as big as his appetite. With a stretch in a Florida pen behind her and no official PI license, Casey comes from nothing and has nothing to lose. She lives full speed ahead with a healthy respect for the screw ups of others. This series revolves around Casey and Bobby, as well as a cast of supporting players from all social strata. There’s lots of action, lots of humor, lots of local color. The books are all set in or near North Carolina’s Research Triangle. The series is best described as irreverent and frequently bawdy — but not without its insights into human nature.
LEGWORK
In the first book of the Casey Jones series, P.I. Casey Jones wins an assignment as bodyguard to Senatorial candidate Mary Lee Masters, only to have it turn into a murder investigation when someone dumps a corpse in the candidate’s car, branding Masters as a killer with only weeks to go before the election. Masters’ opponent is highly skilled and indisputably handsome, causing problems for Casey while challenging her views of good and bad politicians. Casey must unravel the tangled loyalties of North Carolina good old boy politics, puzzle out the contradictions of Southern feminism, confront the realities of her upbringing and dodge everything from cross-bows to irate mothers in her search to find the real killer — all while contemplating new objects of her fickle and frequently bestowed affections.
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OUT OF TIME
This time around, Casey takes on a case that batters her once-sturdy body and threatens to expose her closest held secret. When her investigation into the case of a woman on death row sets her at odds with her hometown police force, Casey quickly learns that true blue friends aren’t necessarily clad in blue. One by one, bodies begin to fall, while Casey holds her ground. She must race to uncover the truth before more people die and before she takes the rap for their murders. With the help of an unlikely pair of bloodhounds and even more unlikely allies, Casey battles back to reclaim her client's life and her own, and to set a trap for a very clever killer before time runs out.
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MONEY TO BURN
After a favorite client gets killed on her watch, Casey vows to find the killer no matter what the cost, either personally or professionally. When the trail leads her into the rarefied ranks of North Carolina’s social elite, Casey’s dirt poor childhood comes rushing back in a wave of self-doubt that adds fire to her considerable fury. She fights to regain her self-confidence and expose an incendiary killer out to destroy more than her name. Casey moves from farmland to the mountains, from debutante balls to drag bars, from boardrooms to bedrooms — and even down the prickly path of lust at first sight — as she battles unknown enemies anxious to see her go up in flames.
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BAD TO THE BONE
At first, Casey proves a sucker for the fragile blonde who claims her estranged husband has disappeared with their child. But Casey soon begins to suspect that the lovely Tawny Bledsoe has played her for a fool. Especially when Casey gets stiffed on the fee, then finds herself embroiled in a murder case with Tawny’s name written all over it. Bad check in hand and a bad taste in her mouth, Casey resolves to stop Tawny once and for all. The battle quickly turns personal when Tawny proves more than a match for the irrepressible Casey. Ego rattled, Casey laces up her high-tops to track her nemesis to Florida for a Saturday night cat fight, leaving her sweet-and-sour southern ways far behind in order to prove that Tawny Bledsoe is one bad to the bone babe who belongs behind bars — no matter what it takes to bring her in.
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BETTER OFF DEAD
It takes a lot to faze Casey Jones, but there are still some cases that hit her like a piledriver to the gut. This is one of them. Helen McInnes, the victim of a horrible crime, barely escaped with her life. Traumatized by the experience, she can no longer set foot outside her home. Further devastated by her attacker’s acquittal and the anonymous threats she begins to receive, Helen turns to Casey for help in reclaiming her life. Leaving Helen with a motley crew of bodyguards — including Casey’s temperamental boyfriend, her corpulent partner Bobby D, his rotund paramour Fanny, and a nearly comatose dog named Killer — Casey heads back to school, prowling Duke University with a different education in mind: one that will help her unmask a fiend who is using the campus as his personal hunting ground.
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BAD MOON ON THE RISE
When a young basketball star and his drug-addicted mother disappear without a trace, the boy’s ailing grandmother begs a reluctant Casey to find him before she dies. But even the normally unflappable Casey Jones is thrown for a loop when she discovers evidence of a murder in their wake and uncovers a shocking secret about the identity of the boy’s father. Casey has a difficult time separating her professional and personal judgment — with disastrous results that put her freedom at peril and endanger the boy’s well being.
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FIRE AND RAIN
Casey Jones is back with a new adventure that takes her from four-foot strippers to forty-something bikers — and a head-on collision with too many ex-boyfriends to count. When The Tiny Dancers hit Raleigh, North Carolina, the diminutive strippers are a huge hit. Men line up and down the block to watch their rootin' and tootin' topless routine. But someone's not a fan and the vicious death threats the Tinajero sisters are receiving kick Casey into high gear.
Then the routine bodyguarding case turns deadly and the case turns personal in more ways than one. Casey sets out on what turns out to be a wild ride that takes her from the flatlands of eastern North Carolina to its most exclusive mountain enclaves.
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READER REVIEWS
“This is one of the best series I have read. Never fails to make me laugh. I have been hooked since the first book. I am now on the third book. I can’t wait to read the rest. Once I start one of these books I can’t put them down!"
"Just came back to say I really liked Legwork! I love a mystery that is also VERY funny and fun,easy to read….with a woman heroine too. Great expressions and excellent characters. I just picked up #2 in the Casey Jones series. The only problem…I have time to read only on my commute on the train…I can say I NEVER wanted my commute to last longer, these books make the grind of my commute go lightning quick."
​"This is a thoroughly entertaining series and has me laughing out loud in most public of places. I simply tell people what I am reading and that it is a little too edgy to read out loud in that circumstance. I, however, need more on the horizon from this most unusual character. Hope you will add to the stories."