The response to Danger in Plain Sight has been remarkable. Reviewers, friends, followers and new readers have all said:

 

  • They’re fascinated by their unpredictable relationship – particularly how it evolves and changes.
  • They’re surprised and delighted with Callie’s transformation—her capacity to make substantive changes as she goes out into the world, grows more insightful, more self-conscious, increasingly self-aware, and against all odds, falls in love with Cash.
  • There’re interested in and, in spite of themselves, almost like the villains, Avi and Christy. They’re particularly captivated by their unexpected relationship – their sincere love for one another.
  • They genuinely enjoy the secondary characters – Cash’s crew: Andre and Doc. Callie’s people at the restaurant: Will, her maître de, Cesaire, her chef, Jean Luc, the bus boy, Jill, her bartender, and so on. They find the interplay between these characters to be lively, funny and realistic, even though they’re so different.
  • Readers compliment the minor characters, how carefully they’re drawn and how they add color and depth to the story. For example, Samter, the detective, Maurie, Avi and Christie’s right hand man, and especially Lew, Callie’s young son.

Though this is clearly a character driven thriller, there has been considerable praise for the plot, the unexpected, though credible twists and turns. The money laundering is carefully detailed, the weapon smuggling well worked out, the new identities that they provide are untraceable, and the way that their money is passed on to them, then apparently legally reinvested in the name of the new identity, is fresh and original.

Last, but not least, readers have found the ending unexpected, exciting and finally, very satisfying.

There has been an unambiguous, overwhelming demand for more books about Cash and Callie. They next one is currently being written.

In the meantime, if you liked Callie James, meet Corey Logan, the compelling, unlikely heroine of the Corey Logan Trilogy.

I’m thrilled to announce that the Corey Logan Trilogy (Inside Passage, Teaser, and Minos) will be released on October 20th, 2020.

I can confidently promise that the emotional intensity, the heart stopping excitement, that you felt with Callie will be back, taking your breath away, when you spend time with Corey Logan.

I’d recommend meeting Corey by reading Inside Passage, the first book in the Corey Logan Trilogy.

Meet Corey Logan

After serving 22 months for drug smuggling, a crime she didn’t commit, Corey Logan is finally released from a Federal Correctional Institution. All she wants now is to get her teenage son out of foster care and make a home for the two of them in Seattle. But there’ll be a Psychiatric Evaluation first, with some shrink named Dr. Abe Stein, and assuming she gets by him, there’s the threat of Nick Season, the candidate for State Attorney General who set her up, tried to have her killed in prison, and now, more than ever, wants her out of the picture. Her problem—she can neither prove nor say what she knows, for fear of losing her son forever.

Like Callie, Corey is a strong woman who’s coped with painful, debilitating hardship. And she’s also operating far below her capacities. She underestimates her ability to take on her nemesis, Nick Season. She believes that if she hides from him, never poses a threat to him, and falls from his radar screen, he’ll leave her alone. Unlike Callie, Corey is very able in the world, but like Callie, she doesn’t do well with her feelings. She doesn’t talk about her inner life. In fact, she really doesn’t see insight as the first and essential step to solving problems. Like Callie, she’s never had a wonderful relationship with a partner. Like Callie, she’s not able to sort through and understand her emotions. She’s not able to see how to make decisions that might dramatically change the reality she’s stuck in.

Long ago, as a producer developing a story, I learned to look for strong, complex characters and a “rich stew” — that is to say, a situation with conflict, emotional intensity, and the potential to evolve in unexpected ways. That is precisely how I begin creating all of my books.

For Inside Passage, that situation was a woman — Corey Logan — coming out of prison who just wants to get her son back. She’s still in danger from the man who framed her. She falls in love with the psychiatrist who does her evaluation as part of the dependency adjudication to get her son back from foster care. The psychiatrist’s mother, a mover and shaker in Democratic party politics, is living with her candidate for State Attorney General — the same man that framed Corey Logan, and now, wants to kill her. That’s a very rich stew.

I tried to make both Corey Logan and Abe Stein extraordinary characters, polar opposites who find each other through crisis. Corey is strong, fearless, at home on the street and able in wild country. Abe is bumbling but brilliant — caught up in the life of the mind, commonly distracted in the world. But they are drawn to each other. Together, both of them change dramatically. Against all odds, Abe convinces Corey that together, they can take on Nick Season, a treacherous formidable adversary. An unimaginable undertaking.

So watch Corey and Abe fall in love. And yes, it’s every bit as unexpected, as thrilling as Callie and Cash. Then watch Corey and Abe actually do the unthinkable, as they risk their lives to confront Nick Season. It’s every bit as frightening, as dangerous, as unlikely, as Callie and Cash going head on with Avi and Christy. And yes, the outcome is absolutely as surprising, as unrelenting and as heart stirring.

While it is Dr. Stein whose work with Corey liberates her, it is Corey who brings Abe back to life. And it is Cash who liberates Callie, but it’s Callie who not only saves his life, but teaches him to love. These love stories — and partnerships — are the foundations, the heart and soul, of all of the books. The challenge in writing them is to make these unlikely couples fall in love – believably, completely – fall in love so madly that they grow and change together and separately.

My undertaking to my readers, is to help them find Abe and Corey every bit as emotionally satisfying, as intellectually stimulating, as deeply moving, and finally, as easy to love as Callie and Cash. If you try Inside Passage, I’m sure, in fact, I’ll wager, that you’ll love Abe and Corey, that you’ll read, no, you’ll devour the other two books in the trilogy.

 

They love the central characters, Callie and Cash.