Hades' Kiss

<p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>A serial killer works the New Orleans streets. The Shrovetide Ripper. Each year more victims add to the body count.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> A new Private Detective emerges. </span><strong style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Nicolaus Vagelle. Criminal Psychologist.</strong><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> Former cop with the NOPD with that one bad case that forces him to throw off the badge change his name...until he is lured back into the </span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>dark work </em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>the</span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> bloody work</em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> of justice. These days he bills himself as a Consultant. And his new obsession becomes the fractured psychosis of evil.</span></p><p> Into this bleak framework a young unsuspecting woman arrives. A Russian immigrant with her own shadowed past. She calls herself <strong>Alya</strong> born of the heavens. And she will either learn to fight or be lost to the eternal night.</p><p> </p><p> <strong>A Study In Darkness: Hades' Kiss</strong> is a collection of short detective works (6 short stories 3 novelettes 2 novellas) interconnected as one. A Novel-in-Stories - <strong style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)><em>Thriller /</em> <em>Mystery / Suspense</em></strong><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> - in a contemporary </span><strong style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>noir</strong><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>. Case notes chronicling the life of a knight in dark armor (to borrow from Philip Marlowe).</span></p><p> </p><p> <strong style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Hades' Kiss</strong><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> is the Story of Two.</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> Two people from different worlds. Intelligent. Noble. Damaged by their pasts. Each recognizing something of themself in the other. In this star-crossed life an act of kindness brings them together.</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> As told in chapters case by case killer by killer. From their first fragile uncertainties together to a greater understanding in each other and of themselves.</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> </span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> </span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Three a.m. The scream ripped at the alley's blackest shadows only to be swallowed by concrete and steel. But screams here were too common and this one would go as unanswered as the rest.</em></p><p><em> </em></p><p><em> I am not a practicing psychiatrist nor am I a priest and your problems are not confidential unless I decide they are...</em></p><p><em> It's business. If it's heart you're looking for St. Augustine's is only six blocks from the river.</em></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> </span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> </span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>...and in response to her pain I felt the chains loosening on my inner animal readying to obliterate all good judgement. I had jettisoned my psychology studies with blinding black fantasies.</em></p><p><em> I opened the car door reminding myself that action without forethought kills the wrong people.</em></p><p><br></p><p><span>������</span><strong>Logline: A New Orleans Criminal Psychologist with a clouded past Nicolaus Vagelle limits his present work to consulting...that is until a serial killer takes one too many and Vagelle must end the madness.</strong></p>