Brazen Virtue

Grace McCabe is a bestselling mystery novelist who has just finished a punishing book tour and wants nothing more than a quiet break. She heads to Washington, D.C. to see her sister, Kathleen, a schoolteacher caught up in an ugly custody fight after her divorce. What Grace finds there is not the visit she expected. Kathleen is living in a run-down neighborhood, and to pay for a top lawyer she has been working nights as a phone sex operator for a company called Fantasy, Inc. Kathleen insists the company protects its employees' identities completely, but Grace is not convinced. Her doubts prove justified one night when an operator is murdered and the scene is marked by the scent of cherry blossoms. Grace is pulled into the hunt for the killer, and her days begin to look like the plots she writes for a living. Investigator Ed Jackson, who happens to be a devoted fan of her books, makes the difference plain: this is not fiction, and real people are dying. As Grace edges closer to the truth, she sets out to trap a murderer far more twisted than any villain she has invented. The danger grows personal, and even Ed may not be able to keep her safe. Brazen Virtue is a suspense novel about desire and its darker edge, with a killer whose hunger for murder spares no one. It was later adapted as the Netflix film Brazen, starring Alyssa Milano.