Tangled Webs
A Hannah Pryce Series Mystery
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About the Book
Hannah Pryce is a homicide detective’s widow, a newspaper columnist teaching creative writing to local San Diego prison inmates, and a recovering alcoholic.
On Christmas Eve, Hannah receives a call that her son, Cord, sober eight years, has died from an apparent cocaine and heroin overdose. Hannah refuses to accept the coroner’s accidental overdose verdict and sets out to find answers from anyone who might offer a solution. Her husband’s ex-partner, Dave Mayfield, discovers fingerprints belonging to Doug Switzer, (an alcoholic that Cord befriended and took into his home), on the drug syringe and arrests him.
Hannah encounters a belligerent narcotics sergeant, Alex Kratzhik, whose card was found in Cord’s billfold; and drug dealer, Jake Sorrell, a man from her son’s army past who threatened to kill Cord because he was instrumental in Sorrell’s arrest and conviction for drug dealing while in the army. After coming to San Diego, Sorrell becomes involved in a chop shop car theft operation which is under Kratzhik’s surveillance.
All this time someone is watching Hannah’s house. Kratzhik engineers a bust on the chop shop operation. Hannah and Dave watch from a distance then become involved when Sorrell attempts to escape. Sorrell is killed while holding Hannah at gunpoint.
A picture included with the long awaited coroner’s report of Cord’s death, reveals that the body taken from Cord’s house to the morgue, already cremated, was not his. But whose body was it? Many other questions arose: where has Cord been all this time and is he safe? Why did he disappear and will he ever return home?
In the final chapter, Cord finds Hannah on the beach and reveals that his “death” was staged as protection from vindictive Sorrell who had threatened to kill Cord, his mother, sister and her family, if Cord didn’t take part in his drug dealing. Cord tells his mother that he was working undercover for Kratzhik to put Sorrell back in prison so that Cord would be free to return home. He confesses that he was the one watching her house.
A surprised and happy Dave meets Hannah and Cord at Hannah’s house, and they happily plan another Christmas celebration with all the family.