Today I’m joining the blog tour for Killjoy. I’m sharing an extract from the book with thanks to Zoe O’Farrell for inviting me on the tour and to the publisher for providing the extract.

Blurb:

The ghost of a famous Follies chorus dancer is haunting the New Amsterdam Theatre. Is she the serial killer?

New York City, 1923
The suspicious death of a chorus girl sends PI Jax Diamond and his courageous canine partner, Ace, to the oldest theater on Broadway. At the murder scene, they stumble upon a clue too bizarre to share with the cops or with Jax’s sweetheart, who would definitely make a haunted mountain out of this eerie little molehill.

But one bizarre clue leads to the next.

As the theater murders multiply, Broadway star, Laura Graystone, Jax’s fiancée, is convinced the ghost of a famous Follies chorus dancer is behind them, and even Jax begins to wonder if the killer is as dead as the victims.

Can Ace and his new gal pal, Lilith, solve this spooky puzzle before someone else is murdered? It’s a whirlwind of ghosts and magic in this fun, fast-paced 1920s cozy thriller.

(Easily read as a standalone)

Extract:

Jax entered the Ambassador Theatre and noticed the door just beyond the wings of the stage was wide open and the lights were on. He looked inside and guessed it was the dressing room for the chorus dancers. Along the left wall, he counted six wide vanities with mirrors, spaced several feet apart, each with its own strip of lighting.
To his right, three long, metal benches were propped end-to-end, lining the entire wall, but the single object sitting dead center held his attention. It was a doll that appeared to be a replica of a chorus dancer wearing a flashy red dress and feathered bonnet with dark ringlets spilling out underneath it.
Puzzled, Jax walked over to it, and he was struck by the overpowering smell of syrupy-sweet jasmine perfume. The scent took him back a couple of years to the night he’d had dinner with Pearl, a hussy who’d been hired to pump him for information on one of his cases. Luckily, he’d caught on to her scheme right away, and she ended up giving him the information he needed instead.
Ace let out a low, deep snarl, pulling Jax back to the present. His faithful partner still stood in the hall rather than rushing into the room like he always did during investigations. “What’s the matter, Ace?”
But Ace refused to budge from the spot and even sat down to make his point.
Jax watched him for a minute, then he picked up the doll. Instantly, all the lights in the room began flickering on and off. At the same time, Jax felt a cold breeze brush by him that left him as quickly as it had come. He raised his brows and set the doll on the bench. The lights stopped flashing.
“Okay, that’s weird.” Slowly, he swiveled his head around in both directions to peek at the vanity lights behind him, and they were all glowing strong. He glared at the doll again before turning around.
A smudge on the vanity mirror directly across from him grabbed his attention. Curiously, he walked over to take a closer look at it, then closer still until he realized it was lipstick imprints, as though one of the chorus dancers had kissed the mirror after applying red lipstick.

***

Killjoy is available from Amazon.

You can follow the rest of the blog tour here: