About the book, The Seduction of Miriam Cross
A sordid sex tape.
A venture capital firm.
A secret society of women.
A Catholic nun.
Miriam Cross, author, feminist and philanthropist, disappears from her Philadelphia home. A year later, a lonely recluse named Emily Cray is brutally murdered in her bed in a small Pennsylvania town.
The police discover that Emily Cray and Miriam Cross were one and the same, but if they know who killed Miriam, they’re not sharing. Miriam’s niece wants answers. She turns to the one woman she knows she can trust – private investigator Delilah Percy Powers.
As Delilah and her staff of female detectives – a militant homemaker, an ex-headmistress and a former stripper – delve into Miriam’s life, they become submerged in an underworld of unfathomable cruelty and greed with implications that go far beyond the gruesome death of one woman or the boundaries of one country. Eventually Miriam’s fight for justice becomes Delilah’s own . . . and Delilah’s obsession with finding the truth may prove just as deadly.
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About the author, W.A. Tyson
W. A. Tyson’s background in law and psychology has provided inspiration for her mysteries and thrillers. The Seduction of Miriam Cross, to be published by E-Lit Books this fall, is the first in the Delilah Percy Powers mystery series.
She has also authored Killer Image (Henery Press, October 2013), the first novel in the Allison Campbell mystery series.
Connect with W.A. Tyson
Website: WATyson.com
Facebook: Wendy Tyson, author
Twitter: @WendyTyson
My Thoughts
I love The Seduction of Miriam Cross. There, I said it. Now you know.
I admit that I was somewhat reluctant to leave the bubble of happy-cozy holiday preparation to read a mystery/thriller, but once I focused on the book (a PDF file of the ARC), I quickly became absorbed in W.A. Tyson’s story.
First, I want to applaud the author on the number of women in the story. While I’m not a particular fan of the Bechdel test, this novel passes it with flying colors. The protagonist is a woman. The main supporting characters are women. Even the titular victim is a woman. Seriously, this novel has more free-flowing estrogen than a fertility clinic, and frankly, it’s AWESOME, because not only are there a lot of women, each one is a fully-realized three-dimensional character in her own right.
Forgive me for gushing.
Then there’s the story itself. The novel opens with the death of a woman named Emily. We don’t learn for a few chapters that Emily IS the Miriam Cross of the title (hush, that’s not a spoiler, it’s in the blurb), and that means we begin with a dual puzzle: who killed Emily, and who is she, anyway? (Actually it’s a triple puzzle – why was she murdered? but I’m writing this before coffee, so forgive me for bad math.)
Very quickly, however, we’re taken into the care of one Delilah Percy Powers, who leads us on our journey to answer all the questions above, with a few side trips that explore who she is, why she does what she does, and how she acquired her team of helpers.
While it’s obvious that this novel serves not just to entertain us with this particular story, but also to introduce us to Delilah, Margot, and Barb as set-up for future visits to this corner of Pennsylvania, and more adventures with Percy Powers, this does not detract from the story. Instead, The Seduction of Miriam Cross feels complete in its own right, but still leaves us wanting to visit with the investigative team again.
W.A. Tyson, you are hereby included in my list of kick-ass women mystery writers, right up there with Sara Paretsky and Margaret Maron. Please write more.
And the rest of you: read The Seduction of Miriam Cross, you will NOT be able to put it down.
Goes well with Pepperoni pizza and Shiner Holiday Cheer beer.
This review is part of a blog tour with TLC Book Tours. They provided me with a digital copy of the ARC of this book in exchange for an honest opinion. No money changed hands. Click here for the tour page.
