First published 2024
Cordelia Black keeps a tidy life. By day she moves through South Louisiana as a polished pharmaceutical rep, all designer clothes and a spotless professional record. By night she hunts down men who have slipped past the justice system and makes sure they do not slip any further. She calls it karma. The evening news calls it something else. Cordelia has built her system carefully, and for a long time it holds. Then a crack appears in her method, and the pressure she has always managed so cleanly starts to build. It gets worse when her best friend falls for a man Cordelia cannot get a read on, someone whose presence threatens to pull the whole operation apart. Cordelia has three loyalties: her chosen family, her hairdresser, and the work she does after dark. When those loyalties begin to collide, she has to reckon with every decision she has made and what she is actually willing to protect. Her freedom and the people she loves are both on the line.
Genres: mystery, crime, adult-fiction, thriller, psychological-thriller, dark
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, morally-complex, psychological, suspenseful, tension-filled
Tropes: found-family, loyalty-tested, secrets-and-lies, unreliable-narrator
Setting: South Louisiana
Period: Contemporary
432 pages · Paperback · Poisoned Pen Press
Content warnings: death, murder, violence