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Immaculate Deception: A Fiona FitzGerald Mystery: An Congresswoman's Unwanted Pregnancy Sets Off an Act of Brutal Vengeance In the Nation's Capital

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Overview

Fiona FitzGerald, a senator's daughter and homicide detective on the Washington D.C. Police force, must investigate the mysterious death of congresswoman Frances McGuire, whose right-to-life stance was well known on Capitol Hill. Fiona finds nothing is ever simple in the world of high-stakes politics as she weaves her way through an investigative obstacle course with explosive consequences. From the glitzy world of political high-rollers to the gritty day-to-day life of a D.C. cop, "Immaculate Deception" is a riveting story of murder and resolve in the Washington corridors of power. Immaculate Deception is the fourth book in Warren Adler's Fiona FitzGerald series. The first mystery, American Quartet, was on the New York Times top ten crime novels of the year. Try the other Fiona mysteries: American Sextet, Senator Love, The Witch of Watergate, and The Ties That Bind.

Editorial Reviews

YA-- Fans of Detective Fiona FitzGerald, tough-but-vulnerable Washington, D. C. cop, will enjoy her latest challenging case: Was the famous dead congresswoman a suicide or a murder victim To add to the excitement, an autopsy reveals that the middle-aged woman was six weeks pregnant, and evidence suggests that her estranged husband could not be the father. Woven into this tale are several complicating threads. FitzGerald walks a social tightrope as a white woman in a police environment dominated by African-American men. Powerful government officials want the case solved as soon as possible--but as a suicide, not a murder. Influential leaders from both sides of the abortion debate clash; the victim was a national leader of antiabortion forces. And in private life, Fiona, determined to become a single mother, has decided on the man she wants to father her child. Adler carries this case forward with speed and ingenuity, tying up loose ends nicely with a satisfying closure for readers and an ironic twist for the heroine.-- Carolyn E. Gecan, Thomas Jefferson Sci-Tech, Fairfax County, VA -- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY.

Author Information

Bio of Warren Adler

Warren Adler is a world-renowned novelist, short story writer and playwright. His books have been translated into more than 25 languages and two of his novels, The War of the Roses and Random Hearts, have been made into enormously popular movies, shown continually throughout the world. Three short stories from his acclaimed collection The Sunset Gang have been adapted as a trilogy and shown on Public Television stations. The Overlook Press will publish a new novel, his 29th, in Spring 2008, and his fifth short story collection, New York Echoes will be published in late Winter of 2008 by Stonehouse Press. His play Libido is scheduled for an off-Broadway production in 2008. His stage adaptation of the novel The War of the Roses is currently being produced in Italy, Berlin, Hamburg, Prague and countries in Scandinavia. Mr. Adler is a pioneer in electronic publishing and has acquired his complete backlist and converted this entire library to digital publishing formats. As a novelist, Mr. Adler's themes deal primarily with intimate human relationships--the mysterious nature of love and attraction, the fragile relationships between husbands and wives and parents and children, the corrupting power of money, the aging process and how families cling together when challenged by the outside world. Readers and reviewers have cited his books for their insight and wisdom in presenting and deciphering the complexities of contemporary life. A product of the New York public school system, Mr. Adler graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School and New York University, where he majored in English literature. Inspired by his freshman English Professor Don Wolfe, Mr. Adler went on to study creative writing with Dr. Wolfe when he taught at the New School. He also studied under Dr. Charles Glicksburg at the New School. Among his classmates were Mario Puzo, William Styron and many other talented writers. Two collections of short stories "American Vanguard" and "Which Grain Will Grow" were published by Doubleday and represented a showcase of many young emerging authors, who like Warren Adler, won both popular and critical acclaim. "I wanted to be a novelist since I was fifteen years old," he says. "Throughout my early career, I would write from five to ten in the morning every day before going to my office, a habit that has stayed with me since." After graduating from New York University with a degree in English literature, Mr. Adler worked for the New York Daily News before becoming Editor of the Queens Post, a prize winning weekly newspaper on Long Island. His column "Pepper on the Side" became a staple of a number of newspapers in the country. During the Korean War, after basic training he was recruited by Armed Forces Press Service to serve in the Pentagon as the only Washington Correspondent for the service. His Washington by-line went all over the world and was published in every publication put out by the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force and Coast Guard. Prior to his success as a novelist, Mr. Adler had a distinguished business career. He has owned four radio stations and a TV station, has run his own advertising and public relations agency in Washington, D.C. and was one of the founders with his wife Sonia and son David of the Washington Dossier magazine. When his first novel was published in 1974, he became a full time novelist. Today, when not writing, Mr. Adler lectures on creative writing, motion picture adaptation and the future of Electronic Books. He is the founder of the Jackson Hole Writer's Conference and has been Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Jackson Hole Public Library. He is married to the former Sonia Kline, a magazine editor. He has three sons, David, Jonathan and Michael and four grandchildren and lives in New York City.

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Additional Info

Imprint

Stonehouse Press

Filesize

537.35 KB

Number of Pages

272

eBook ISBN

1590061993

Excerpt from: Immaculate Deception by Warren Adler

The clock is ticking away for Fiona FitzGerald.

Fiona awoke, her senses alert to instant reality. She did not grope for recognition of sounds, shapes and texture. She knew at once what had awakened her. Oak leaves from the twin oaks in the garden, showing their first spring growth, rustling, making sounds like beans shifting in a bean bag.

Then she felt the light breeze through the opened window caressing her left cheek and smelled the gamey odor of the sheep manure the gardener had spread over the rose beds. Opening her eyes, she could see the pale grey slate of presunrise framed by the window.

The texture of early spring always jogged her memories of place. This house and its voices. Daddy calling a cheery goodbye. Mommy's footsteps crunching along the pebbled path of her beloved garden on the way to the shed. Death had not stilled the voices. Death never did. It was the axiom of homicide. People left tracks, left an aura, left flaked pieces of themselves like the invisible residue of dead skin cells.

She stretched under the comforter, toes touching Greg Taylor?s hard calf muscles. Her position was partially diagonal. Their strenuous couplings had caused them to shift crosswise in her king-sized bed.

Turning, she observed him in the pale light, then lifted the comforter for a full view of his now fetally positioned body. Hard muscles from calves to shoulders, tight buns, smooth sun-burnished skin, healthy, sexy, beautifully made, a magnificent specimen. Greg would be the first to agree.

Resting her head on her elbow, she studied him with her detective?s clinical eye. A good genetic match, she decided, at least physically. The odds were that they could make good babies, maybe a bit egocentric, a trifle compulsive, suspicious, distrusting . . . suddenly she was cataloging a long list of their mutual eccentricities and foibles.

Yet lately she had secretly entertained the idea of single parenthood. At thirty-six such ideas were understandable. Her mother, dead seventeen years, would have been appalled at the idea. Not that she wasn?t listening to her thoughts at this very moment. Only speculating, Mother, Fiona admonished the periodic apparition, just in case it might be planning to put in an appearance. It would be just like her mother?s apparition to catch her in flagrante delicto.

In fact, her mother, in whatever incarnation, would be appalled by her daughter?s present life. At the time of her death, Fiona was still every inch the senator?s daughter, groomed like a thoroughbred for life among the elite and powerful. Sweetly scrubbed and scented and being turned out for the good life at Mount Vernon Junior College, she was the very model of a good Catholic girlhood, providing boring confessions to old Father Thomas and, swear to Jesus and hope to die, still a true unblemished virgin as her mother?s casket was lowered into her grave.

?Respect and dignity is everything,? her mother had counseled. It was at the heart of her litany and her life. ?No stranger must invade the temple of your body which has been fashioned to accommodate God?s image.? It was quite a convoluted explanation but she had gotten the message. Only marriage could obviate the status of man as stranger.

Loud and clear, the voice still rose in her mind. She had certainly cohabitated with a fair share of strangers. But she had long outgrown the secret sense of postcoital guilt that used to afflict her.

But the fact was that her mother would approve of her relationship with Gregory Taylor. Not entwined like this, of course. But fully dressed and posed for scrutiny. Greg was tall, handsome and, at least by heritage, Catholic, his mother of good Irish stock. His father had been a renegade Catholic all his life, but he had taken extreme unction to hedge his bet, which would have warmed her mother?s heart. Greg, on the surface, would appear to be the perfect prospective mate in every respect.