Killing Kate: A Novel

by Julie Kramer

Overview

The next page-turner in Julie Kramer’s bestselling series featuring intrepid television reporter Riley Spartz is “a flat-out tour de force of harrowing twists and turns” (New York Times bestselling author William Kent Krueger).

Crime-solving means high ratings for Minnesota TV reporter Riley Spartz when she nails the culprit behind Silencing Sam (“Sexy, sinister.” —Linda Fairstein). But the stakes rise when Riley must piece together a serial killer’s murderous motive for Killing Kate.

Channel 3’s news director sends Riley on a dog rescue story sure to win over Minneapolis–St. Paul’s viewers. But when the Twin City’s latest murder victim is someone from Riley’s past, she can’t stay away. Kate Warner was her college roommate’s sister, and the killer’s signature—a chalk outline of a winged angel—links him to a string of homicides across the Midwest. Unearthing his agenda leads Riley to the legendary Black Angel statue in an Iowa cemetery—and may lead to a twisted trap designed just for her by the angel killer himself.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781439178041
Publisher:	Atria Books
Publication date:	07/26/2011
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Julie Kramer is a journalist turned novelist. She writes a series of thrillers set in the desperate world of TV news. Julie has won the Daphne du Maurier Award for Mainstream Mystery/Suspense, RT Reviewer’s Choice Award for Best First Mystery, as well as the Minnesota Book Award. Her work has also been nominated for the Anthony, Barry, Shamus, Mary Higgins Clark, and RT Best Amateur Sleuth Awards. She formerly ran WCCO-TV’s investigative unit before becoming a freelance network news producer for NBC and CBS. She lives with her family in White Bear Lake, Minnesota.

Read an Excerpt

PROLOGUE

The night began with a teenage dare. She followed reluctantly as he led her by the hand to the shadow of the Black Angel.

A full moon gave them less privacy than she would have liked. Her back now against the horizontal concrete slab, she waited for him to lay his body across hers. Her lips prayed for the encounter to be quick because out of the corner of her eye a raven watched them intently from atop a gravestone.

Unlike most cemetery angels, whose heads and wings lift upward toward heaven, this statue’s face and wings bent downward over the grave it guarded—as if pointing straight to hell. And while angel sculptures are traditionally a golden bronze or white marble, this one’s hue was black. Besides the figure’s sinister posture and color, its stony eyes seemed to stare into hers as if issuing a personal condemnation.

Her feeling of doom was so strong, the girl struggled to move away. But he held her down, pushed her dress up to her waist, and there, at the hem of the Black Angel, they sinned.

The writer paused over the keyboard and reread the scene. Then with a smile, added sensory and sensual details about places the boy was hard and the girl was soft, and how their throaty moans were the only sound of life amid the dark tombstones. A final tweak when the female character closed her eyes tight to shut out the angel’s glare completed the carnal passage.

© 2011 Julie Kramer