About MURDER FOR STORM by Russell Little
- Author: Russell Little
- Publisher: Plum Creek Press
- Language : English
- Paperback : 318 pages
- Purchase on Amazon
Marilyn is a master of deception, a chameleon living multiple lives to shield her sweet son while ensnaring naive couples in her web of schemes across Houston, Texas. Free from the clutches of the law, she weaves her plans with calculated precision. But shadows from her past loom large—her deranged mother and subservient stepfather, relentlessly badgering her with their fearful questions.
And then there’s O.C. Simms, the disgraced police detective obsessed with bringing her down. Fired for failing to catch her, Simms is haunted by the belief that Marilyn murdered her lover and lawyer, Ed. He’s relentless, determined to hunt her until he’s either vindicated or dead, defying his former captain’s orders.
As a hurricane bears down on Houston, Marilyn sees both a threat and an opportunity. The storm’s fury will devastate the city, creating chaos and diverting attention. Amid the tempest’s destruction, she crafts her most daring plan yet, aiming to exploit the storm to erase all traces of her crimes. But Simms remains undeterred, a relentless force pursuing her through the floodwaters.
Can Marilyn turn the storm to her advantage, keeping the police at bay and obliterating the evidence? Will she slip through the cracks of justice once more? In this high-stakes game of cat and mouse, the storm is just the beginning. Dive into a crime thriller where every moment is a battle for survival, and every decision could be her last.
Little’s characterization shines exceptionally bright with Marilyn, a master manipulator who retains the sweet, loving embrace of a mother trying to give her son a good life, even as she takes advantage of everyone else to get what she wants. And what Marilyn wants most is for O.C. to leave her alone: he’s hot on her trail, without permission from the force, and desperate to prove to himself—and the world—that his firing was unjust. Little carefully builds the two distinct sides of Marilyn, a loving mother and scheming monster, in unnerving scenes that find her cuddling her son while considering how to force Timmy, a 27-year-old hacker, to do her evil bidding.
Highlighting the ultimate outcome for hardened criminals, Little uses Timmy’s fate as a presage for Marilyn, who becomes increasingly desperate as O.C. makes headway in discovering her new identity. Outside of his determination to bring Marilyn to justice, Little keeps O.C. fairly contained, never delving too deeply into other aspects of his life (though readers will sense his simmering rage and overwhelming desire to clear his name). The action climaxes when a gunman enters O.C.’s home and threatens his girlfriend and her family, driving O.C.’s final steps toward Marilyn. Though some grammar errors distract, Little expertly balances character development with pulse-pounding action sequences in this stormy offering.
Takeaway: Chilling character study of a master manipulator pursued by a determined ex-cop.
Comparable Titles: Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, B.A. Paris’s Behind Closed Doors.
Production grades
Cover: A-
Design and typography: A-
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: C+
Marketing copy: A
About MURDER FOR ME by Russell Little
- Author: Russell Little
- Publisher: Plum Creek Press
- Language : English
- Paperback : 158 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0692722181
- ISBN-13 : 978-0692722183
- Purchase on Amazon
Ava is a middle-aged socialite jogging through a wooded park near her Houston home. The trees and her earbuds provide the only escape from her problems. Little does she know another problem is waiting just ahead—the kind of problem that wants her dead.
Houston attorney Larry Lamb has his own difficulties to sort through. He’s mediocre at work and a failure at marriage, and there’s something inside him screaming to get out. It’s becoming harder and harder to control—and it’s affecting him in mysterious ways.
Ava’s husband Don is madly in love with Marilyn Ramirez, a woman with the power to convince men to do whatever she wants. Marilyn has been arrested on suspicion of attempting to have Ava murdered so she can have Don for herself.
When Don drops a six-figure retainer onto Larry’s lap to defend Marilyn, Larry schemes to dump the case and keep the money. But Marilyn has a different plan, and the minute Larry sees her, her plan starts working.
Can Larry resist Marilyn’s manipulation, or will she summon the mysterious voice hidden deep within him? Follow Larry’s journey into the mind in this dark psychological page-turner.
“Satisfying, twisty, and pure evil…mixed with a lot of mayhem…a great read.”
“A dark and richly developed mystery thriller and suspense novel that blends the character development of a Dean Koontz novel with the intrigue of a Hitchcock film”
“The relaunch of Murder for Me is now out by critically acclaimed thriller author and lawyer, Russell Little”
My Life to Date...
I was born in Amarillo, Texas. Amarillo is in the Panhandle. It’s flat as far as you can see, windy, and covered with mesquite. The federal government builds bombs there. After graduating from law school, I married a Houston girl who promptly announced we were moving to Houston. It was the best thing she could have done for me. I practiced law in Houston for forty years, raised three kids, and I’m still married to that same woman. People are usually quite surprised about that since one of my most successful areas of law is Family Law, or Divorce, as well as Criminal Law.
My career was populated by colorful characters and wild cases that eventually fed my imagination. I’m required to say that it’s all fiction, but I can assure you that the people I met and the situations I encountered for that career are in my soul, and my soul is in my story.
I decided to write the first novel a very, very long time ago. As I raised a family and practiced law, I must have started the novel twenty times, but it wasn’t until my youngest son graduated from high school and left for college that I decided it was time to finish. He said to me, “Dad, you’re over fifty, you need to finish that book. You’re running out of time.” And with those loving words I was spurred to finish.
The children’s stories were written by us because they were inspired by my first Granddaughter, Vivi. One day during Grandparent’s Day at her school she brought me a stuffed elephant and told me she loved it. I’ve always loved the large fauna of Africa, and this inspired my wife and me to write children’s stories about elephants, rhinos, that would encourage young readers to care for these animals and want to protect them. Also, my granddaughter likes those kind of stories, so we get a hug from her when she reads them.
An interesting fact is that I practiced law for forty years, I tried over one hundred jury trials and hundreds more before a Judge alone. Along the way I came across some unbelievable situations. While not all can be told, they can feed my stories, and I can write those.
I write on a regular basis, but I’m not always productive. Some days I get up and erase the whole days previous work because I woke up and realized that, unlike the night before, now I thought it was garbage. My oldest son gives me grief about that.
My favorite authors are not modern. I read Proust, Dostoevsky, and Chekhov. When I’m in a writer’s block, I read Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. The chapters about sitting in a Paris café always gets me back to the keyboard. The love of writing is what I got from those authors.
Murder by Storm comes out in October. It’s the continuation of the battle between the two main characters: pursuit. and deception in Houston during a hurricane. Every reader should want to experience that through someone else’s eyes. And with a great story to go along with it, it’s perfect.
