Intense Heat

Key West attorney Candida Andriole delivers to her readers a birds eye view into the private lives of the local residents of a tiny island in the Florida Keys. Interwoven into her writing are some of her most memorable legal adventures of her twenty something years of experiences as a practicing attorney. Her debut novel is the story of the harrowing roller coaster ride the residents and local police are forced to take and what they endure when a killer inserts himself into their calm and peaceful existence. Zoe St Clare lawyer and professor of forensic sciences has relocated to the island to escape a gruesome past filled with murder and mayhem and the lingering memories of a brutal murderer. The island Police Chief Rolando Castaneda enlists her aid in hunting a serial killer when an horrific series of incidents threaten to put a damper on the event that brings more business to the island in one week than all the rest of the year put together and to leave the Police Chief without a job. The year round residents and law enforcement are bracing themselves for the onslaught of tourists attending the week-long celebration when the faceless body of a bride is discovered on the beach moments before her wedding ceremony is to begin. This is only the first of a series of grizzly incidents involving an elusive and insidious killer who can't possibly be human and do the unspeakable things that he does. The island has never experienced such horror. Zoe faces much more than she bargained for when she becomes mired in a frightening ordeal that involves her former life in New York City. She struggles personally with the similarities between the killings on the island and the murders that have been haunting her. In the middle of his campaign for re-election and the worst heat wave in the history of the Florida Keys, Chief Castaneda assisted by Zoe St Clare makes a desperate attempt to keep his job and to figure out if there is more than one madman on the island before the killer strikes again.