Bad Intent

August 1, 1994
While settling into L.A. life with her lover, homicide detective Mike Flint, independent filmmaker Maggie McGowen, seen last in Midnight Baby , continues to compile an impressive portfolio as an amateur sleuth. For Maggie's film on growing up in the housing projects, Mike suggests she interview librarian LaShonda DeBevis and prostitute Hanna Rhodes. He omits telling her that both women were key witnesses 14 years ago, when they were children, in the conviction of Charles Conklin for the murder of an L.A. cop--and Mike was on the case. Now, as elections loom, the incumbent DA is trying for political points by requesting the release of Conklin, saying that police pressured the witnesses into lying. While Maggie, who feels ill-used by Mike, pursues her film and some sideline queries on the case, Mike is told by his superiors to take time off until things cool down. In the midst of confusion about the past, the old murder leads to a new death. In this compelling tale, issues personal and professional, good and bad, past and present all contaminate each other, leaving no character in a position to cast stones. Maggie, a divorced mother whose unabashed sexual attraction to Mike accompanies a deep reluctance to remarry, is a complex and highly likable heroine whose cases test and prove her mettle. Hornsby gets better and better at her craft.

September 1, 2014
Book three in Edgar Award–winner Hornsby’s Maggie McGowan series, originally written in 1995, catches the independent TV journalist just after she relocates from San Francisco to Los Angeles to be with her lover, Mike Trent, an L.A. police detective whom she met while he was investigating her sister’s murder. Meanwhile, a sleazy self-ordained cleric and a self-serving district attorney begin an investigation into a 15-year-old murder conviction stemming from a case that Mike and several other homicide detectives worked on. Postel possesses an attractively deep and smoky voice that is also intelligent and alert for Maggie, the story’s narrator. She adds a brusque impatience, a sense of knowing the game, to Maggie’s deal cutting with network news producers, then switches to an empathic approach when the reporter is coaxing information from reluctant subjects. Postel also provides the men in the story with credible baritone variations. The only false note is the voice given by the narrator to some of the novel’s African-American women (a little heavy on the Ebonics). An Open Road/MysteriousPress.com e-book.