The Crowning Circle

About the Book

The Crowning Circle takes place in an imaginary mid-sized town called Chatsford, Ohio.  "Doc" Skeet Cullum, is a forensic psychologist who helps detectives in the city’s homicide department.  Skeet has a strange theory about death which he uses to unravel tough cases.  Jake, Skeet's friend, is an inventor-engineer who owns a company called Solutions, Inc.  On Thursdays, they get together at Jake's house to play guitar.

The book opens on the morning of one of these Thursdays as three violent deaths — one a murder without apparent motive —  occur.  News of the first interrupts Skeet’s proposal to his girlfriend of seven years.  That night it's obvious to Jake that Skeet, usually stoic, is deeply upset.

In the next four days, personal and public calamities fall like dominoes as the formerly reclusive Jake sets out to help Skeet, without telling him.  Their friendship withstands all strain until Jake tries to penetrate Skeet's inscrutable facade  — under which, Jake finally suspects, is something crucial.  He is right.

About the Author

J. R. (Jamilla Rhines) Lankford populates her mainstream thriller with a cast of multi-ethnic characters for good reason. The oldest daughter among twelve siblings, she grew up in a home full of books and music, dreaming over her family’s old passports. Initially, she pursued a career in electrical engineering and became the first woman and first African-American to staff the Secretariat of a Technical Committee in one of the world standards organizations headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. She worked and travelled at this job for twelve years, never forgetting the influence of her childhood reading, of her poet mother, and of her father who died when she was five, while still writing his first novel. In 1993, with her husband’s encouragement and support, she left to transform herself into a novelist. She and her husband live outside of Houston, Texas.