0:06
Traitors
When Cooper awoke the morning after Heather and Jason left to return to school, a heavy mist swirled off the sea. Max looked up eagerly as Cooper grabbed his leash, and the two of them headed out. As they began their dawn walk along the Quoque beach, the foggy atmosphere made him think of the cold misty mornings on the flight deck of the USS Ronald Reagan.
After graduating as a mathematics major from Dartmouth, he’d decided he had enough set theory, differential equations, linear algebra, and topology. He wanted something more people-oriented and exciting. A college buddy urged him to join the Navy, and he took the plunge, qualified for flight school, and learned to fly fighter planes at Whiting Field in Pensacola, Florida. After his training, he joined Strike Fighter Squadron 22 and flew F-18 Super Hornets off the Ronald Reagan. Being one of the “Fighting Redcocks,” as the pilots in his squadron were known, afforded Cooper the camaraderie he craved, and combat sorties over Afghanistan filled his quota for excitement.
For many of his fellow naval aviators, flying became a way of life, but for Cooper, the exhilaration of flying wore off with time. “Like driving a fancy race car armed with missiles” was how he described it. After four years as a naval aviator, he was looking for alternatives when a CIA recruiter came knocking. The agency appealed to his patriotism, offered to teach him tradecraft and languages, and promised him a diplomatic cover position in an Eastern European embassy.
Seeking a new adventure, he jumped at the chance and, after eighteen months in training, arrived at his post in Vilnius. He’d met Maria on one of his trips home from Vilnius and had fallen in love. After they had been courting long-distance for a while, she wrangled a transfer to Lithuania, and they married two months later. While their marriage reinforced his cover, it dramatically increased their risk if the Russians caught him spying. At first, caught up in the seductive world of post-Soviet Eastern Europe, they lived with that added pressure. But that changed when they began to think about children. That’s when Cooper decided his covert life had run its course.
Thinking he’d like to become a diplomat, he took the LSAT, won a place in law school at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, and secured a leave of absence from the CIA. His experiences at the agency and in Vilnius led him to focus his legal education on national security issues. He had planned to return to the CIA but changed his mind after meeting with DOJ lawyers while researching a law review article on espionage prosecutions. They opened his eyes to the DOJ’s unique role in representing and advising the myriad US intelligence agencies, and he realized the potential for a broader and more influential role at Justice than at the CIA.
Although the DOJ preferred to hire lawyers with experience in private practice, Cooper’s outstanding academic record, first-rate recommendations from his law school professors, and experience in the Navy and the CIA won him a position. After that, his work at the DOJ opened all kinds of career opportunities, including stints as a US attorney investigating and prosecuting spies, defectors, and the trolls who contaminated US elections.
Upon his return to DC, he had reconnected with Roger Clayton, a friend from his undergraduate days at Dartmouth, who, at that time, represented his home state of Massachusetts in Congress. Politically, they shared a middle-of-the-road perspective and suffered through the country’s hard turn to the right under the Trump administrations. Registered as an independent, Cooper had feared for his job, but he’d kept his head down and survived the DOJ purges under Trump.
Ultimately, conservatives pushed the country too far to the right, and the ever-moving political pendulum swung back. Cooper took personal time to write position papers for Clayton and worked on his successful campaign for the Senate. At the end of his first term in the Senate, Clayton had run for president and ultimately won the White House. Cooper served on his transition team, briefing the new president on a range of legal and security issues.
After more than a decade in the DOJ, Cooper was now the deputy assistant attorney general responsible for counterintelligence in the National Security Division. Along the way, he had devoted nearly every waking hour to protecting his beloved country from foreign powers—mainly Russians and Chinese—who were unwavering in their efforts to spy on the US government and sow misinformation and discord among Americans.
He’d prosecuted spies who’d followed in the footsteps of Aldrich Hazen Ames, the Soviet double agent inside the CIA, and Robert Philip Hanssen, the FBI traitor who’d delivered countless classified papers to the Kremlin. He’d investigated people like Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, who released highly classified data out of a misplaced sense of self-importance.
4:39
Mother of Night: Excerpt and Cover Reveal
On the Feast of Saint Lucy, in the fourth year of the reign of King Richard
Was it a dream or madness, the promise of freedom and home? For a day or two, Jean of Picardy, a minstrel by trade, had dared to believe the gallant words of his master, allowing himself to envision green French fields and days without the perils of the sea, embarkments under the cover of night, assassins, pirates, and spies. But over a hundred leagues of ocean lay between him and their next moorage, and countless more after that, each one bringing its own particular set of dangers, exhaustion and hunger the least of them.
Hasn’t the war been enough? he’d asked the grinning Hugo upon hearing his latest madcap plan, but his master would not be dissuaded. The Holy Land, it seemed, had taught him naught—all desert, swords, and glory, a dream that had turned out to be anything but. Against all counsel, for they sailed on the very threshold of winter, the Vlasta had slipped out of the Port of Ragusa to chance the tides of the Mare Adriatic, the great narrow sea that lay between Italy and the Dalmatian coast. Hugo had his mind set on a wild ambition, to skirt the perilous, rock-strewn shore, up past the Isle of Hvar and the looming mountains, then a ride by land across the breadth of Europe to reach distant Saxony. And from there, a swift sail home. First, the ship must speed through these waters for the Port of Pula, a coastal stronghold in the hands of King Béla III of Hungary, who might lend their plight a kindly ear, the right of passage, and aid.
To Saxony. And safety.
For two long years, Jean and the knights had been away from home, called by God to the holiest of duties. There wasn’t one among them who didn’t yearn to return. To country halls. Warm hearths. Wives and children and no sound of battle ringing in their ears. To France, aye, but more so to Aquitaine. But there was no simple route home and that meant a long overland trek to Saxony, and the shelter of a well-disposed court.
Flaxen-haired, youthful, yet lean from the many battles of a crusade that he’d never rightly held a place in, Jean was callow enough to stand on the deck with the others come noon, those in the select company of Hugo Mathgriffon. For once, he could think himself their equal, if only in their shared hope. The salt spray glittered in the sun, a musk in the lungs to revive the gloomiest of souls, quell the deepest of doubts. But there was scant warmth in it. Winter was on the air, a breath of frost threaded in the wind. At their backs, the bora and the loss of a welcoming land, a gracious council of burghers and a rare, brief, and pleasant harbour. Ahead, there was naught but a blue horizon, fair billows in the sails of the galley, the steady drum and heave of sixty oarsmen and every reason for faith. Aye, Jean would see Aquitaine again, green, beloved Aquitaine. Perhaps there he’d discover a way to forget all the dust and the blood, and mend the crack in his heart.…
He should have known better. A vaunter at the best of times, Hugo was sure to babble during his fevers, the so-called merchant presently sequestered below, sweat-drenched, vomitous, and pale. The Templars, the stout Odo, and his ill-bred squire, Pons, guarded his cabin door grim-faced and shoulder to shoulder, cold, cramped and out of sorts. Jean would have found the two amusing if not for the sneering regard of the gangling squire, his piggish eyes looking down the stump of his nose at one he clearly viewed as surplus baggage, a Frankish vagabond who had somehow wormed his way into Hugo’s good graces. And if not for the older knight’s grumbles at his frequent, troubled visits: “Ah, the nursemaid again,” Odo had said, tutting. It wouldn’t be long before the minstrel found good cause for concern, as the winds rose and the skies grew dark, and he realised that Hugo would have said anything, anything at all, to keep his men buoyant and the Vlasta heading north. For now, the lot of them revelled in their master’s bold assurance that God watched over them as he did all those who’d taken the cross, and the hundred odd leagues between them and their destination were naught but a blink in the span of things, that courage would see them through.
Guillaume, the famed Knight of Orléanais, should have known better.Guillaume, the famed Knight of Orléanais, should have known better.
“We have horses aboard,” said he, leaning with gilded sinews on the railings of the prow, showing naught of the blustering chill. “Strong Dalmatian coursers, a saddle for each of our rumps¾and even one for the priests.” His golden locks, whipped by the wind, were belied by the scars of his face, the leavings of his countless triumphs. But the sunlight shone in his eyes and Jean could not but love him for his conviction, love him for the hero he was, as they all did. “They will see us swift to Saxony, I swear it.
9:08
Five Deep Cut Irish Procedurals to watch as you wait for Irish Blood to return
Last week, I was chatting with a friend of mine, an Irish actor named Ciaran Byrne who has been in a million crime shows and films, and he mentioned some of his favorite less-mainstream bleak-as-hell UK/European crime shows. Well, in our chat, he also gave me a few recommendations for his favorite less-mainstream bleak-as-hell IRISH series.
I’m sure readers of this website well know series like Dublin Murders and Bodkin and How to Get to Heaven From Belfast. And of course, the new Alicia Silverstone series on Acorn, Irish Blood. But here are a few more crime shows coming out of the Emerald Isle, for your bleary, existential, stress-watching pleasure!
Blackshore
In Kate O’Riordan’s piercing thriller series, a young police detective from Dublin becomes enmeshed in a missing person’s case in her hometown, a case with great implications towards the past she’d like to forget.
Kin
You’ve probably heard of this one, but anyway… Charlie Cox leads the stacked cast of this series about the Kinsellas, an Irish crime family embroiled in a gang war.
Red Rock
This soapy crime series, which ran from 2015-2020, is set in a bustling Dublin Garda Síochána station. There are 117 episodes, which must be some kind of record for an EU-set crime series. (Yes, I know soaps have many more episodes than normal procedurals. I’ve just never in my life recommended a British crime show that I couldn’t watch all of in a day. Red Rock is the EastEnders of crime!)
Crá
Crá, also known as Boglands, is prohibitively dark for me (I mean, most of these shows are), so you’ll have to trust Ciaran. The plot? The body of Conall Ó Súilleabháin’s mother, who has been missing for fifteen years, is finally found in a bog. He’s forbidden from officially investigating, so he teams up with a journalist to solve the crime on his own, and bring justice to his mother’s name.
Irish Crime
Also known as Der Irland-Krimi, this German-Irish show from 2019 is about a retired German-born police psychologist who solves crimes in Galway. What turns her onto this new path? Well, the the body of her missing husband is found.
11:09
Sneak peek: My Mother's Murder Trials
I’m glad you’re tuning in, because this sneak peek feels like a real‑life thriller you could only get from a courtroom. A daughter, who grew up seeing her mother as the steady, caring figure she always knew, starts to suspect that the woman she loves might be behind a double murder that happened years ago. The suspicion isn’t just a gut feeling; she uncovers old police reports, a missing‑person file, and a set of photographs that point straight to her mother’s involvement.
The story jumps forward to the trial itself, where the courtroom becomes a stage for raw emotions. The daughter takes the stand, her voice trembling but steady, describing the moments when she first pieced together the evidence. The prosecution leans on forensic details—DNA, ballistics, and a timeline that places the mother at the scene. Meanwhile, the defense paints a picture of a woman who’s been mischaracterized, arguing that the evidence is circumstantial and that the real perpetrator could be someone else entirely.
What’s striking is how the episode doesn’t just focus on the crime; it digs into the family dynamics that get ripped apart when a loved one is accused of something so horrific. You see the mother’s composure cracking under cross‑examination, the daughter’s struggle to reconcile love with doubt, and the broader community’s reaction as old rumors resurface. It’s a reminder that legal battles are as much about personal reckonings as they are about facts.
If you’re curious about how the truth unfolds, the full two‑part “48 Hours” will air Saturday night. It promises a deep dive into the evidence, the courtroom drama
12:41
Meet-cute Murder: 5 Romantic Mysteries with “Happily Ever After” Endings
Have you ever thought that what a good crime novel really needs is a meet cute? Yeah, me too. Maybe that’s because I’ve written thirty-nine romance novels (two under Cara Tanamachi and thirty-eight under the name Cara Lockwood, had my first turned into a movie, now streaming on Amazon Prime, and hit the USA Today bestseller list).
In fairness, I’ve also thought a romance might be better with a crime scene. I mean, there’s Romantasy, so why not Romanstery?
That’s why my fortieh book sets out to do just that. Kiss, Marry, Kill, combines my two favorite genres on earth: Romance and a twisty Whodunit.
In Kiss, Marry, Kill, true crime podcaster Ella Takeda finds herself investigating a series of Chicagoland murders, where the Canceled Killer dispatches people who’ve been shamed online in increasingly ironic ways. But when Ella puts the wrong suspect on blast, she gets fired from her job, has to head home to the small Wisconsin resort town where she grew up, and even worse, it seems the killer might have followed her home.
Ella soon starts to suspect the Canceled Killer might be one of the three men she’s dating: Mateo, a playful stuntman with all the right moves, Russo, the Chicago police detective who’s a walking Swipe Right, and Jude, her brother’s best friend, whose nerd vibe might be the perfect disguise for a ruthless killer. No spoilers, but by the end you find out whodunit AND you get a nice little Happily Ever After (it’s a twofer).
If you want more HEA in your next mystery, here are just a few Romansteries you should read.
*
Kate Eberle, If Books Could Kill
If you’ve seen Obsession, you already know to be careful what you wish for. Main character Roxie didn’t get the memo. Her wish is to be a main character in one of the heartfelt, swoony, rom-coms of her favorite author, Anna Matthews.
But when her wish come true, and the handsome stranger in her meet cute tries to kill her, she starts to realize that Anna Matthews’ new book is a crime thriller. It would be like someone wishing to be in one of my romance novels only to discover they’d landed in Kiss, Marry, Kill. Roxie, of course, finds help (and real chemistry) with Grant Hoffman, an English professor with a love of crime novels.
This sizzling whodunit takes place in both Boston and London, a must-read for lovers of both genres.
Kate Posey, Serial Killer Games
Do you want to be a fly on the wall as a possible serial killer falls for his true-crime obsessed co-worker? This whirlwind trainwreck of a romance is dark (how would you like to get severed Ken doll parts wrapped in little boxes as sweet tokens of affection?), all set against the backdrop of the Paper Pusher who likes to shoves executives off the tops of office high rises.
This book has it all: sizzling chemistry, a real whodunit, and dark humor that had me laughing out loud. It’s like if The Hating Game and Silence of the Lambs had a baby. Trust me when I tell you, this book grabs you and doesn’t let go.
R.L. Kilmore, Murder at Cinnamon Falls
Small town. Check. Second-chance romance. Check. A Hallmark-worthy Fall Fest with Pumpkin Spice lattes and romance in the air. Check and Check. And…a crime scene, because we’re going there. When a body shows up at a local diner with a note that simply asks the question: Who’s next?
Amateur detective Nia teams up with her sexy ex-high school boyfriend Jesse to solve this cozy mystery second chance romance that delivers more than its share of twist and turns.
Liz Lawson, It Happened One Murder
If you want the perfect balance of mystery and romance, this book’s for you. In this messy second-chance romance, Harriet Baker’s extravagant birthday party is crashed by…who else? Her ex, Nic, AND a dead body. When suspicious shade is thrown to Nic’s sister, the two reluctantly team up to solve the crime, and…you know, no spoilers, but absolutely, probably, fall in love.
Also? There are more twists in this book than you can shake a butcher knife at, which will keep you guessing until the very end.
Aya de León, A Spy in the Struggle
Are you a fan of One Battle After Another, but wished it had a happily ever after? Then you need to read this razor-sharp, thrill a minute book by Aya de León, winner of the International Latino Book Award. When Yolanda Vance is asked by the FBI to spy on her own people, she’s got enough second-thoughts even before a dead body shows up. Turns out, she might just be falling for an activist who’s opened her eyes and her heart.
Shay Kauwe, The Killing Spell
Hundreds of years in the future, a catastrophic flood destroys the Hawaiian Islands and unleashes magic in the world. Displaced to Los Angeles, a young Hawaiian woman named Kea must fight to clear her name when a Filipino activist is killed by a specific Hawaiian death spell.
17:06
How To Stay Creative While Living In the Suburbs
It was easy in Brooklyn. Step outside and see: a couple fighting in public, a trio of old men chatting on the stoop, and a woman walking quickly along, belting out whatever song was playing in her headphones—all inside the length of a block. It was there for the taking: the densely packed, captivating drama of life. A writer’s dream. My first novel, Looker, was built on the experience of simply…living in Brooklyn. We lived a few houses down from a celebrity whose casually elegant, exalted existence threw into question the meaning and worth of my own; this psychological friction sparked an intense narrative about a woman who becomes increasingly obsessed (and increasingly transgressive) with her famous neighbor. So: the city made me do it, and I wasn’t sure I could do it again without the generative if enervating pressures and proximities of the city when we moved to the New Jersey suburbs. But I did do it: I went on to write a second novel, and now I’m publishing my third novel, THE MAN, which was deeply inspired by my so-called “quiet” environs. About eighteen miles from the frenetic pulse of the world’s greatest city, I discovered new ways to sustain my creative fire.
It took time, though. I was both relieved and devastated to leave New York, like I imagine many people are. Relieved to be leaving behind all the schlepping and endless hustling the city required, but grieving for the one place on earth I’d ever fallen in love with as deeply as if it were a person. But I was excited for New Jersey, too (don’t laugh), and for a new kind of life—with a little house and a backyard and fields down the street where my son could play the sports we needed to exhaust him. But I worried that I’d never find inspiration in the deep green lawns and clean streets, or on the sidelines of peewee soccer games. I feared everything would be too easy, too easeful, in the suburbs—and this ease would leave me permanently creatively empty. The overwhelming forces of the city had acted on me as a necessary stimulant—and sometimes also as a necessary obstacle I wrote against, carving out space and quiet for the work of the mind. I wondered how my writing could possibly transmit something like the intensity of Looker when I was living in a larger, less quirky version of Stars Hollow (a la The Gilmore Girls).
I started to wonder if “peace and quiet” might be something of a boon. That I might even conjure intensity from my new town’s peaceful, quiet depths.I found that intensity, eventually, in unexpected places—like the town’s public library, where I started to work part-time. I had a fresh MLS degree but still held the cliched notion of libraries as hushed and sedate, and imagined my librarian self as a smiling, bespectacled figure behind the desk who would dole out assistance and book suggestions in a breathy whisper. Ha. Even in a small-town library, as I came to learn, that image was a joke; in truth the public library is as full of compacted life (and noise), sometimes, as a Brooklyn city block, with a similarly diversified collection of happenings and inhabitants. The man trimming his toenails in a back corner, for instance. Or the woman freaking out because she wasn’t allowed to print 2,000 pages on a public computer. The pair of pimpled teens making out after school in the stacks. All of this woven into the more structured fabric of the library’s goings-on: baby storytimes, craft programs, book talks, makers’ fairs…a whole vibrant world in one building! I quickly learned that I could sit behind my desk (sometimes bespectacled, sometimes not), and watch it all unfold. Soak it up. (A writer’s dream!) I started taking notes, and before long, I had the idea for my second novel, How Can I Help You, which takes place, yep, in a small-town public library. And yes, the book, the story, its characters—all frighteningly intense.
My next novel, The Man, came from something of a suburban awakening. Or reawakening. Since writing How Can I Help You meant that my new locale hadn’t smothered my creative impulse as I’d feared, I started to wonder if “peace and quiet” might be something of a boon. That I might even conjure intensity from my new town’s peaceful, quiet depths. From those clean streets and deep green lawns—and even the peewee soccer games. I’d done this during my childhood and adolescence, after all; in the placid half-nothingness of the Richmond, Virginia suburbs, I’d learned how absence and silence could make way for the reign of the imagination. I may have been at my most prolific in those pre-teen and teen years, writing poems, stories, half-novels, and essays galore in my (refurbished, not creepy) basement room.
After years of city living, I’d forgotten this time of creative abundance and the quiet that had fostered it; in recalling it, I started down the path that would lead me to writing The Man, a novel fueled and fed by the dark potential of the suburbs.
21:38
Suspenseful and Escapist: 5 Thrillers to Read at the Beach This Summer
Many people read thrillers to escape where they are. It makes sense. When you have two hours to kill while waiting for a connecting flight, nothing passes the time like getting into a domestic thriller and finding out a long-disappeared character isn’t really dead.
Yet despite their escapist quality, thrillers are just as popular in airports as they are in more pleasant settings. Say, a beach. You wouldn’t think so. We escape to the beach; shouldn’t we read about softer things?
Yet for many of us, a good thriller—even a dark, murdery one—is part of the enjoyment, fitting in our maximum-pleasure routine somewhere between laying out the towel and popping a cool drink. Maybe it’s like any sharp flavor: surrounded by too much cream, and we need a little crunch.
In that way, there are few better ways to pass one’s time in the sun than with a thriller: spy, legal, domestic, crime, it doesn’t really matter. Some people refer to these as guilty pleasures. But when you’re surrounded by good weather and plenty of distractions, there’s no reason that your favorite experience can’t still come bound in paper.
Here are some candidates that won’t make you feel guilty for reading them, no matter where that may be.
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Laura Lippman, Sunburn
Laura Lippman’s sharp, literary style is a complete antidote to guilty-pleasure reading, and the title alone will remind you to mind your umbrella’s position. Although there are plenty of intriguing secrets and turns of plot, Lippman also infuses a strange fantasy quality to the book: what if you were to throw the vacation aside and maybe live and work in this place all summer long?
By the end of the book, you feel like you’ve been there for months.
Sally Hepworth, The Family Next Door
I’m a sucker for all things domestic thriller. The grounded settings feel both accessible and relatable enough to get immediately sucked in. That’s important in a beach read, especially as you deal with distractions like gulls eyeing your sandwiches.
Sally Hepworth turns an Australian cul-de-sac community into one such vortex here, including a rich cast of characters who are constantly adding layers to the mysteries.
Jess Lourey, The Quarry Girls
Maybe there’s nothing in Minnesota like salt ocean air, but Jess Lourey paints such a vivid picture of a hot, sticky, mysterious summer that reading this on a beach will still become something of a vivid scratch ‘n’ sniff experience. Her prose is endlessly engaging; the only problem is that the perfect pacing may make your time on the beach fly by.
Ruth Ware, One Perfect Couple
Reality TV, a remote tropical island, a fledgling relationship, cut off from the mainland: heck yes, this is a beach read, and even a modern twist on Lord of the Flies. If you’re a fan of locked room mysteries and don’t usually need a massive, “it was the sea monsters all along” kind of twist, this one is a no-brainer choice.
Megan Miranda, The Last House Guest
A beach is a strange emulsifier of socioeconomic classes—some arrive by walking a few steps down their porch, others via parking lot. Miranda mines that theme to its fullest in this tale of a Maine vacation community, exploring themes like privilege and loyalty with a fully lived-in setting that will remind you of returning to your favorite haunts. A classic “this place isn’t all it seems” tale.
***
