Be with the Dead - Dalrymple, Matty

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Résumé :
In the spectral silence of a deserted beach town, one wrong step could be fatal. A riveting, fast-paced, intriguing read with a colorful cast of characters who pull you in and don't let go! -Lisa Regan, USA Today and Wall Street Journal Bestselling Crime Fiction Author In an almost-deserted condo complex overlooking the wintry Atlantic, some secrets are stored away just as carefully as the summer deck chairs-until Ann Kinnear arrives. Hired for what should be a straightforward speaking engagement at a writer's conference, Ann is soon drawn into a tangle of ambitions, grudges, and dangerous bargains. An author desperate to break free of a suffocating publishing contract, a calculating editor juggling clients and agendas, and a shadowy figure slipping in and out of a thirteenth-floor unit all become part of a web Ann can't ignore-especially when her unique ability starts picking up threads no one else can perceive. As icy winds rattle the condo's walkways and the off-season streets grow darker, Ann must decide whom to trust in a community where every favor comes with strings, and where the next knock at the door could bring a breakthrough ... or a one-way descent. For readers who love atmospheric settings, amateur sleuths with an extraordinary edge, tangled motives, and slow-burn suspense that builds toward a deadly confrontation, Be with the Dead blends the eerie isolation of a winter beach town with the pulse-pounding stakes of a narrow ledge negotiation, where a single misstep could be the last step Ann takes....

Sommaire:
Ann Kinnear has been invited to the Gotham Crime Fiction Conference to give a talk on Making the Supernatural Super in Your Novel, but she isn't enthusiastic about adding public speaking to the offerings of Ann Kinnear Sensing. Ann's conference liaison, editor Darren Van Osten, has problems of his own. His client, bestselling thriller author Jock Quine, was killed during a burglary at his Princeton mansion, and Darren is despairing of being able to coach Jock's bookish son Alec to pick up the authorial torch from his larger-than-life father. Darren's best hope of staying solvent is to capitalize on his most mysterious client, Lara Seaford, whose debut novel is sweeping the thriller awards. Meanwhile, cozy mystery author Marilee Forsythe is demanding that her son and daughter-in-law, Jeremy and Jeanette, provide the money she needs to buy out her cozy contract and switch to her true calling: thriller novels. When Marilee is attacked at an author event and refuses to leave her Ocean City, Maryland, condo, the couple entertains guilty visions of a life without her disparaging comments and unreasonable demands. As Ann's involvement in Darren and Jeanette's dilemmas deepens, she finds the cases have more in common than mere authorial posturing ... and that the stakes are life and death....