Killer Picture Postcards

KILLER PICTURE POSTCARDS (a Mercy Investigations Novel) is set in San Francisco from 1994 to 1998 and is divided into three equal parts of twenty chapters each: "Getting There is Half the Fun" shows Jack Nowan (mid-30s) and Mercy Torcher (early 30s), who have left their academic jobs in Santa Fe's St. Mello's College (the prequel to this series is Dead White Males) and moved to San Francisco, learning how to become private detectives from their mentor Ed Steadman, an ex-homicide cop and longtime San Francisco PI who wants to retire and sell his one-man agency. It is written from the point of view of either Jack or Mercy. The second part, "Up Yours," is written from the point of view of the murderer, Holmes Ruen Prestin, who has abandoned a Japanese wife and daughter in Japan and disappeared back into the US using a stolen passport blank. He has come into an inheritance, and plans mayhem carefully, with self-control and great power. He is both an Aikido martial arts master and a bamboo flute shakuhachi master - brilliant, mad, steely, a lunatic bent on destruction. In the novel, he ages from 37 to 40. The third part, "Postcards from Hell," is again told through the eyes of Jack or Mercy, as Mercy Investigations, with Ed Steadman still around, tries to find the stalker terrifying Mercy's best friend, Barbara "Bitsy" Isles, a single 34 year old investment banker. She and Mercy went to university together. Jack Nowan turns 38 in this last section. The murderer stalks, and is stalked, to a wicked ending.