THE SERIES TAKES SHAPE

Three cases. One investigator.
The Shaping of Frank Leland.

If you’ve been following my work for a while, you may already know that Frank Leland wasn’t originally supposed to be the star of this series. He began as a secondary character in an early draft of THE BETRAYAL OF DANNY PRYOR.

But Frank had other ideas.

He stole every scene he walked into. Took over conversations. Pulled the emotional center of the story toward himself. Before long, I realized I wasn’t writing Danny Pryor’s story anymore. I was writing Frank Leland’s.

So I put Betrayal aside and wrote Working Stiff instead — introducing readers to an overweight, ex-NYPD vice and narcotics detective turned private investigator trying to survive in a city coming apart at the seams. New York in the late 1970s: bankrupt, violent, and still staggering under the weight of its own decline.

And thanks to all of you, Frank found an audience.

For that, I’m deeply grateful.

After WORKING STIFF, I returned to THE BETRAYAL OF DANNY PRYOR and approached it through Frank’s eyes. The result became a darker, richer, far more personal novel — and one I’m incredibly excited to finally share.

Right now, Betrayal is with my beta readers.

But Frank Leland apparently isn’t interested in giving me much time to rest.

The third book in the series has already begun taking shape.

SNOWBLIND is set during the brutal New York City Blizzard of ‘78 — a city buried beneath dirty snow, exhaustion, fear, and rage. It begins with a seemingly minor road-rage incident that leaves a young child dead hours later.

What follows may be the darkest Frank Leland mystery yet.

The novel is still in its earliest stages, but the outline is already there — right down to the final twist ending.

And before I’d even written the first chapter, I already knew what I wanted the cover to feel like: Isolation. Grief. Cold. The weight of the city pressing down on Frank and everyone trapped inside it.

I kept seeing the same image in my head: Frank Leland alone in the dirty snow of Times Square after the storm.

So today, I wanted to share that image with you.

An early glimpse of Book Three in the Frank Leland Mystery Series:

SNOWBLIND.