A Trace of Smoke Excerpt 4
May 26, 2008
Hannah!” called a booming voice.
Without turning, I recognized the baritone of Fritz Waldheim, a policeman at Alexanderplatz. A voice that had never before frightened me. “Here for the reports?”
I drew my hand back from the photograph and cleared my throat. “Of course,” I called.
My damp skirt brushed my calves as I trudged down the hall to his office in the Criminal Investigations Department, struggling to bring my emotions under control. Feel nothing now, I told myself. You can feel it later, but not until after you leave the police station.
A Trace of Smoke Excerpt 3
May 19, 2008
NEWS: Still hard at work on the trailer. I hope to have something to show for it in early June.
EXCERPT:
My fingers touched the cool glass that covered the image, aching to touch the young man himself. I had not seen him naked since I’d bathed him as a child. I pulled my peacock green silk scarf from my neck to cover him, realizing instantly how crazy that was. Instead I clenched the scarf in my hand. A gift from him.
I knew that standard procedure dictated that the body be buried within three days. It might already be in an unmarked grave, wrapped in a coarse linen shroud. After Ernst left home and started earning his own money, he swore that only silk and cashmere would touch his body. I flattened my palm on the glass. The picture could not be real.
A Trace of Smoke Excerpt 2
May 13, 2008
NEWS: Am working hard on putting together a book trailer for the book. Just trying to scare up some images for it.
EXCERPT:
My eyes darted to the words under the photograph that had called to me. Fished from the water by a sightseeing boat the morning of Saturday, May 30, 1931, the day before yesterday. Apparent cause of death: stab wound to the heart. Under distinguishing characteristics they listed a heart-shaped tattoo on his lower back which said Father. No identification present.
I needed none. I knew the face as well as my own, or my sister Ursula’s, with our own square jaws and cleft chins. I wore my dark blonde hair cut short into a bob, but he wore his long, like our mother, like any woman of a certain age, although he was neither a woman nor of a certain age. He was my baby brother, Ernst.
A Trace of Smoke Excerpt 1
May 2, 2008
Welcome to my blog, gentle readers! I will be posting news about my novel A TRACE OF SMOKE and weekly excerpts until the novel is release in May 2009. Hope you enjoy it!
NEWS: I delivered the second book in the series, A NIGHT OF LONG KNIVES, to my editor today. That one should hit the shelves in May 2010. Now, on to A TRACE OF SMOKE:
CHAPTER 1:
Echoes of my footfalls faded into the damp air of the Hall of the Unnamed Dead as I paused to stare at the framed photograph of a man. He was laid out against a river bank, dark slime wrapped around his sculpted arms and legs. Even through the paleness and rigidity of death, his face was beautiful. A small, dark mole graced the left side of his cleft chin. His dark eyebrows arched across his forehead like bird wings, and his long hair, dark now with water, streamed out behind him.
Watery morning light from high windows illuminated the neat grid of black and white photographs lining the walls of the Alexanderplatz police station. One hundred frames displayed the faces and postures of Berlin’s most recent unclaimed dead. Every Monday the police changed out the oldest photographs to make room for the latest editions of those who carried no identification, as was too often the case in Berlin since the Great War.
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