A Jill Smith Mystery Series by Susan Dunlap
A Jill Smith Mystery #1
Karma
Susan Dunlap
Hard-nosed beat cop Jill Smith combs Berkeley for a Buddhist guru-killing cultistIn Berkeley, California, Telegraph Avenue is the headquarters for the city’s strangest inhabitants. Cultists, drug addicts, and hippie burnouts wander its streets, looking to raise their consciousness or, if that fails, to just get high. And Jill Smith walks with them, a beat cop with her finger on the pulse of one of the most unique neighborhoods in America. With time on her hands after her divorce, Jill lets a friend drag her to hear the district’s hot new guru, a Buddhist holy man from Bhutan. As his disciples clap and cheer , Jill tries to keep from smirking. The guru finally draws her attention, however, when he slumps forward with a knife in his back. She calls for backup and cordons off the temple. Jill doesn’t care about karma, but she knows when justice is due.This ebook features an illustrated biography of Susan Dunlap including rare images from the author’s personal collection.
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A Jill Smith Mystery #2
As a Favor
Susan Dunlap
A favor for her ex-husband leads Jill Smith to a blood-soaked crime sceneSomeone is stealing hubcaps from the Berkeley police department. An afternoon spent chasing the petty thief leaves beat cop Jill Smith exhausted, flustered, and in no mood to talk when her ex-husband Nat calls asking for a favor. A colleague of his at the county welfare department, Anne Spaulding, is missing. Jill doesn’t care about her husband’s new crush, but a note of fear in his voice compels her to investigate. She drives to Anne’s house, where she finds the back door open, the living room trashed, and the walls caked in dried blood. Searching the apartment yields few clues. The woman liked make-up, exercise, and credit cards. The only item that points to a possible suspect is a pewter pen, which Jill recognizes as one of Nat’s. She has no love for her ex-husband, but is she ready to arrest him for murder?This ebook features an illustrated biography of Susan Dunlap including rare images from the author’s personal collection.
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A Jill Smith Mystery #3
Not Exactly a Brahmin
Susan Dunlap
Newly promoted detective Jill Smith confronts a traffic circle homicideAfter six months of perfect weather, the people of Berkeley, California, have forgotten how to drive during a thunderstorm. Newly christened homicide detective Jill Smith is on her way home to a chocolate ice cream dinner when she gets caught in a traffic jam at the city’s only roundabout. At the front of the line, she sees the trouble: a flipped-over Cadillac and one dead driver. The man behind the wheel was one of the city’s leading citizens, a philanthropist in a town that puts charity first. He was coming down Berkeley’s steepest hill when his brakes failed, flipping his car and ending his charity work forever. Two things trouble Jill. First, the car’s brakes had been inspected that afternoon. Second, the driver was nearly blind, and unfit to ever take the wheel. Finding the killer will lead her from Berkeley’s upper echelon all the way into the depths of the community’s underbelly.This ebook features an illustrated biography of Susan Dunlap including rare images from the author’s personal collection.
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A Jill Smith Mystery #4
Too Close to the Edge
Susan Dunlap
An activist’s murder forces Jill to infiltrate Berkeley’s psychedelic underworldA town as diverse as Berkeley, California, is never without controversy. This year the uproar is over the Rainbow Village, a hippie-occupied bayside lot that has degenerated into a drug-infested cesspool. As the city tries to eject the squatters, two Grateful Dead fans are murdered and a developer is assaulted. But for homicide detective Jill Smith, the conflict at the Village is only a nuisance until the violence gets personal. While staking out a coffee shop, Jill sees Liz Goldenstern, a handicapped activist who has long been a thorn in the side of local business. Her wheelchair has broken down, and Jill offers to push her home. The next morning, Liz is found savagely murdered at the Village. To find her killer, Jill will have to remember that sometimes hippies are far from pacifists.This ebook features an illustrated biography of Susan Dunlap including rare images from the author’s personal collection.
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A Jill Smith Mystery #5
A Dinner to Die For
Susan Dunlap
Jill investigates the death of a chef who was mysteriously poisoned by his own soupUntil the helicopter crash, Jill Smith never knew fear. A homicide detective in the leftist enclave of Berkeley, California, she has faced down her share of thugs, thieves, and killers, but since surviving the downed helicopter, her nerves have been shot. Unwilling to submit to her anxiety, she goes back to work. The chef and owner of Paradise, an upscale restaurant in Berkeley’s so-called “Gourmet Ghetto,” is found on the floor of his own kitchen, poisoned by the soup he was seasoning. On his way to the top of the foodie pyramid, the chef made enemies of his dishwasher, his neighbors, and Earth Man, a hippie holdout who lives on kitchen scraps. To pinpoint the killer, Jill will have to remember what it means to be fearless.This ebook features an illustrated biography of Susan Dunlap including rare images from the author’s personal collection.
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A Jill Smith Mystery #7
Death and Taxes
Susan Dunlap
When an IRS agent is poisoned, Jill Smith faces a murder case in which dozens of California taxpayers are suspectsIRS agent Philip Drem is found face down in People’s Park, a haven of drug addicts and streetwalkers in the heart of liberal, eccentric Berkeley, California. By the time homicide detective Jill Smith arrives on the scene, Drem’s wallet is gone and the tax collector is near death. The method of attack is as uncommonly cruel as the IRS agent himself. After his death, Jill goes through Drem’s files in search of those whose lives he made miserable. An exercise guru, a bankrupt small business owner, and a hippie sculptor are all possible suspects, but as she researches the dead man she finds that the pain of filling out a 1040 might not be the only motive for murder.This ebook features an illustrated biography of Susan Dunlap including rare images from the author’s personal collection.
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A Jill Smith Mystery #8
Time Expired
Susan Dunlap
When a rash of pranks on the city’s meter maids turns deadly, Jill Smith isn’t amused Two witnesses see the man drag the old woman into a canyon while brandishing a rifle. As night falls, detective Jill Smith and the Berkeley police department set up a perimeter. The canyon is a hostage negotiator’s nightmare—dark, rough, and full of escape routes—and when she finally opens communication, the gunman doesn’t respond. Rather than wait for dawn, Jill leads her team into the darkness. At the bottom of the canyon they find a battered old mannequin and a box of stolen parking tickets. The entire incident was another skirmish in one man’s ongoing war to humiliate the city’s meter maids. Interviewing the residents on the canyon’s lip, Jill meets Madeleine Riordan, retired attorney and legendary firebrand She seems to know something, but refuses to tell until the next day. When Jill returns, the woman has been murdered, and Jill suspects that the prankster may have lost his sense of humor.This ebook features an illustrated biography of Susan Dunlap including rare images from the author’s personal collection.
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A Jill Smith Mystery #9
Sudden Exposure
Susan Dunlap
An Olympic athlete finds her life in danger when she starts a feud with a ruthless gym ownerHomicide detectives don’t chase streakers. So it shouldn’t be Jill Smith’s problem when Berkeley’s new public nudity ban stirs the spirit of the city’s exhibitionists, unleashing a horde of indignant flashers on the city streets. But department infighting has resulted in Jill being stripped of her gold detective badge and put back in uniform to pursue the naked radicals. She’s pursuing one of these au naturel miscreants though a patch of poison oak when she’s stopped by Bryn Wiley, Olympic diver, gym owner, and local hero. Bryn is in a feud with a rival fitness club, whose owner she suspects of shooting bullets through her car windows. Jill can’t help her—she has nudists to apprehend!—and so Bryn resolves to take matters into her own hands, holding a press conference where she calls her rival out. It’s a bold move, and may also be a foolish one. Her assailant’s next target will be something far more valuable than a car.This ebook features an illustrated biography of Susan Dunlap including rare images from the author’s personal collection.
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A Jill Smith Mystery #10
Cop Out
Susan Dunlap
When a PI vanishes and leaves a body in his office, it’s up to Jill Smith to pick up the piecesJill knows something’s wrong with Herman Ott as soon as she sees him on the patio at the Claremont Hotel. A perpetually broke ex-hippie private investigator, Ott is known around town for owning a wardrobe of nothing but yellow second-hand clothes. Yet today he wears all black, and after asking Jill to meet him at Berkeley’s most elegant hotel, he clams up and refuses to explain why he needsto see her. Apologizing, he asks her to call him an hour later. Jill obliges, but Ott never answers his phone. And the next day, inside Ott’s office, she finds a body. Jill doesn’t know what kind of trouble Ott is in, but if she doesn’t find him soon, his notorious yellow suit may be marred with a dash of blood red.This ebook features an illustrated biography of Susan Dunlap including rare images from the author’s personal collection.
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