"Molly Masters, a sleuth with an irrepressible sense of humor
and a deft artist's pen, finds that going home can be deadly..."
—Author Carolyn G. Hart
Molly Masters Series
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This series came into existence when the leader of my mystery-writing critique group suggested that I stop working on my manuscript about a psychiatrist and instead develop a main character who is more like me. After half an hour of self-pity, I decided to take her advice and asked myself: What, aside from fiction writing, are my true passions? I'd entered college as an art major, and for several years, I used my (now rusty) cartooning skills to create birthday cards for my friends. Next, I asked myself: What if I'd been forced to leave Boulder and return to my hometown in Clifton Park, NY? One year and hundreds of rewrites later, Death Comes eCalling was born (although back then, eCards weren't as big as faxes, so originally Molly was creating faxable greeting cards).
From that point on, incidents in my life provided the spark for additional Molly Masters Mysteries. The seeds of Death Comes to Suburbia were sown when I returned to my high school twelve years after graduating, and a teacher asked to see my hall pass. I assumed she was joking, until she threatened me with detention and sent me to the principal's office. Death Comes to a Gardener was written after my former homeowner suddenly showed up on my front porch—after living eight-plus years in another state—and informed me that I should be scrubbing the flagstone in my back yard with a toothbrush. Death Comes to a Retreat was born from my being misled by the owners of a "resort" when I had organized a writers' retreat for my critique group. I was thinking of my father, who'd died after a terrible struggle with Alzheimer's, when I wrote Death on a School Board. One night, I had to endure a painfully bad magic act, and spent the time dreaming up Death at a Talent Show. My daughter was learning to drive and starting to date when I wrote Death Comes to the PTA.
I haven't decided if the next book will pick up where that one left off: with Molly apprehensive of her emptying nest, or if I'll skip ahead to her husband's upcoming retirement. Please stay tuned...and we'll find out!
Death Comes to the PTA
Book 7Everybody agrees that talented mom Patty Birch is the perfect president to lead the Carlton Central School PTA to new accomplishments. Under her steady stewardship, the organization verges on winning a prestigious award. Her skills, however, are sorely tested when angry board members assemble to discuss a secret video that reveals their pettiness and ineptitude. Not long after the meeting adjourns, Patty's tenure is cut short by a knife-wielding killer.
When Molly Masters, the town's unofficial sleuth, gets on the case, Perfect Patty turns out to be not so perfect after all. She not only instigated the notorious video but also some of its most humiliating episodes, many of which remain on the cutting-room floor. It's no wonder someone in PTA-land is ready to kill—and Molly is destined to be the next victim...
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Nominated for Best Contemporary Mystery by Romantic Times
Death at a Talent Show
Book 6Dress rehearsal for the PTA fundraiser is at its chaotic peak when one of the seven identical clowns cavorting on stage pulls out a gun and shoots the director, Corrinne Buldock. Molly Masters, also dressed as a clown, is a stunned and baffled witness to the killing. She wonders: which of her fellow performers, all of them respectable parents and teachers, can conceivably be a murderer?
The rumor is that Corrinne and her old boyfriend split up . . . and that she had just confessed to a sexual involvement with a student. Soon Molly knows more dirty little school secrets than she would care to—and more than enough to send a desperate killer back into action...
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"O'Kane is certainly on her way to making her Molly Masters series the I Love Lucy of amateur sleuths."
—Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel
Death on a School Board
Book 5Funding for sports or funding for the arts? There's not enough money for both, and a ruthless battle is raging among the seven members of the Carlton school board. Sylvia Greene, the board's unbalanced president, is even threatening to expose the members' most private secrets if they don't vote her way.
But a sudden dose of poison takes care of Sylvia...permanently. The bad news is that Molly Master's dad, the board member who was Sylvia's first blackmail target, is now the prime suspect for her murder. Shocked and furious, Molly hits the warpath, determined to find the real killer. A deadly field trip tells her almost all she needs to know—except her own perilous fate...
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"O'Kane delivers a satisfying whodunit."
—The San Francisco Chronicle
Death Comes to a Retreat
Book 4
Violets are blue.
Roses are red.
One of you bitches
Will soon be dead.
Those lines weren't quite what greeting-card entrepreneur Molly Masters had in mind when she encouraged her weekend workshop students to write a bit of verse, anonymously. Eerily, within hours, one of her aspiring writers is murdered, apparently without rhyme or reason.
Or so Molly thinks until a storm and a blackout isolate the group in their mountain retreat. Katherine the professor, Nancy the shrink, Lois the doting mom, Julie the dog breeder, and Celia the big pest. Behind each one's suburban facade lurk passions unfit for family greeting cards, and a rage for life—and death...
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"Sure to please. Endearing characters, touching family and friend relationships, and a feisty heroine."
—Diane Mott Davidson
Death of a Gardener
Book 3Gardening is not usually considered a blood sport, but whenever cartoonist Molly Masters is out in the yard she must contend with the harassing comments of her neighbor, Helen Raleigh, who once owned Molly's house. Then, after a particularly unpleasant confrontation, Helen is shot dead on Molly's property—and a shocking secret is revealed.
When Molly shoves her trowel into the dirt of the murder investigation, she starts receiving threats—and realizes that one determined killer could quiet her questions forever...
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"Molly is a realistic heroine you'll feel you've known for years."
—Romantic Times
Death Comes to Suburbia
Book 2Trouble returns for cartoonist Molly Masters when Preston Saunders, the husband of Molly's least-favorite person—Stephanie—is murdered in his and Stephanie's living room. An hour earlier, Molly and Preston had a terrible argument on Molly's front porch, when he confessed that he'd stolen Molly's one ribald cartoon, which won a contest in a porn magazine with Preston posing as cartoonist "Mike" Masters. Shocked at discovering her husband's body and nine-months pregnant, Stephanie goes into labor, and Molly winds up having to play midwife.
While holding her newborn son, Stephanie pleads with Molly to do the one thing that, as a mother herself, Molly doesn't have the heart to refuse: to help prove that Stephanie's teenage daughter did not kill her own father. Molly's quest leads her to going undercover at both the high school and the country club...and to becoming a killer's second target.
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"Whenever the going gets rough, Molly falls back on her own sense of humor and her affection for her children. For us, the kids stole the show."
—Denver Post
Death Comes eCalling
Book 1This witty, sometimes cynical, debut introduces Molly Masters, a greeting card designer who returns to her hometown in upstate New York while her engineer husband is sent on a job in the Philippines. With their two young children in tow, Molly starts up a egreeting card service and reunites with her lifelong friend, Lauren. She receives a note from a high-school teacher whom she had satirized in a poem in the school newspaper years before, but before Molly responds, the woman dies. Molly gets a series of emails and faxes implying that she is responsible for the teacher's death and threatening her and her children.
Nearly everywhere she turns, Molly encounters members of her graduating class who remember the nasty poem: Tommy Newton, a nerd who is now the investigating police officer; "Miss Popularity," Stephanie Saunders, the current PTA president; football hero Jack Vance, who has become the elementary school principal. When a classmate's husband is murdered, Molly's suspicions focus on all the nearby alums. Peppered by Molly's greeting card brainstorms, O'Kane's engaging mystery takes a slanted, entertaining glance at high-school figures we all loved to hate. (Publishers Weekly review)
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"A sparkling debut...You will treasure the clever plot, great kids, and a charming class composite that tumbles right out of a high-school yearbook."
—MLB News
