John Copenhaver

A New York Times Best Crime Novel of the Year A Washington Post and TODAY.com must-read book selection An Agatha Award, Lefty Award, and Macavity Award finalist! When a popular mystery novelist dies suspiciously, his writing partner must untangle the author’s connection to a serial killer in award-winning John Copenhaver’s new novel set in 1950s McCarthy-era Washington, DC.In May 1954, Lionel Kane witnesses his apartment engulfed in flames with his lover and writing partner, Roger Raymond, inside. Police declare it a suicide due to gas ignition, but Lionel refuses to believe Roger was suicidal. A month earlier, Judy Nightingale and Philippa Watson—the tenacious and troubled heroines from The Savage Kind—attend a lecture by Roger and, being eager fans, befriend him. He has just been fired from his day job at the State Department, another victim of the Lavender Scare, an anti-gay crusade led by figures like Senator Joseph McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover, claiming homosexuals are security risks. Little do Judy and Philippa know, but their obsessive manhunt of the past several years has fueled the flames of his dismissal. They have been tracking their old enemy Adrian Bogdan, a spy and vicious serial killer protected by powerful forces in the government. He’s on the rampage again, and the police are ignoring his crimes. Frustrated, they send their research to the media and their favorite mystery writer anonymously, hoping to inspire someone, somehow, to publish on the crimes—anything to draw Bogdan out. But has their persistence brought deadly forces to the writing team behind their most beloved books? In the wake of Roger’s death, Lionel searches for clues, but Judy and Philippa threaten his quest, concealing dark secrets of their own. As the crimes of the past and present converge, danger mounts, and the characters race to uncover the truth, even if it means bending their moral boundaries to stop a killer.

The Killer Queens is a new series of historical fiction books based on true stories. Sources, such as police reports and newspaper articles, are examined to gather as many facts as possible surrounding each case. As with any work of fiction, some creative additions are made when telling these stories, usually within the conversations between the personalities involved. The various sources are the basis of these conversations and hopefully, make them come alive for the readers to help understand what was meant by those words.Book 1 of the series focuses on what has been called "The Crime of the Century" in 1920s United States. At the center of this murder case were Nathan Leopold Jr. and Richard Loeb - two wealthy University of Chicago students who, in May of 1924, kidnapped and murdered 14-year-old Bobby Franks.With Leopold and Loeb, both males, the dominance shifted from one to the other. Regardless of who held it, the result was the same. They were both very interested in crime and pushing the envelope for the next thrill. The vicious "thrill kill" of Bobby Franks was the bloody result of an intense and unhealthy co-dependent bond between the murdering duo.As you read the exploration of the case in this book, ask yourself: Would these young men be as vulnerable to their manipulations today? If they couldn't have harnessed and used shame as a control tactic, would they have been as successful at recruiting a criminal counterpart? Finally, to what degree can we hold the prevalent homophobia of this era accountable as a force to bear on this tragedy?

The Killer Queens is a new series of historical fiction books based on true stories. Sources, such as police reports and newspaper articles, are examined to gather as many facts as possible surrounding each case. As with any work of fiction, some creative additions are made when telling these stories, usually within the conversations between the personalities involved. The various sources are the basis of these conversations and hopefully, make them come alive for the readers to help understand what was meant by those words.Book 1 of the series focuses on what has been called "The Crime of the Century" in 1920s United States. At the center of this murder case were Nathan Leopold Jr. and Richard Loeb - two wealthy University of Chicago students who, in May of 1924, kidnapped and murdered 14-year-old Bobby Franks. With Leopold and Loeb, both males, the dominance shifted from one to the other. Regardless of who held it, the result was the same. They were both very interested in crime and pushing the envelope for the next thrill. The vicious "thrill kill" of Bobby Franks was the bloody result of an intense and unhealthy co-dependent bond between the murdering duo. As you read the exploration of the case in this book, ask yourself: Would these young men be as vulnerable to their manipulations today? If they couldn't have harnessed and used shame as a control tactic, would they have been as successful at recruiting a criminal counterpart? Finally, to what degree can we hold the prevalent homophobia of this era accountable as a force to bear on this tragedy?

2022 Lambda Literary Award WINNER in LGBTQ Mystery Two lonely teenage girls in 1940s Washington, DC, discover they have a penchant for solving crimes--and an even greater desire to commit them--in the new mystery novel by Macavity Award-winning novelist John Copenhaver. Philippa Watson, a good-natured yet troubled seventeen-year-old, has just moved to Washington, DC. She's lonely until she meets Judy Peabody, a brilliant and tempestuous classmate. The girls become unlikely friends and fashion themselves as intellectuals, drawing the notice of Christine Martins, their dazzling English teacher, who enthralls them with her passion for literature and her love of noirish detective fiction. When Philippa returns a novel Miss Martins has lent her, she interrupts a man grappling with her in the shadows. Frightened, Philippa flees, unsure who the man is or what she's seen. Days later, her teacher returns to school altered: a dark shell of herself. On the heels of her teacher's transformation, a classmate is found dead in the Anacostia River--murdered--the body stripped and defiled with a mysterious inscription. As the girls follow the clues and wrestle with newfound feelings toward each other, they suspect that the killer is closer to their circle than they imagined--and that the greatest threat they face may not be lurking in the halls at school, or in the city streets, but creeping out from a murderous impulse of their own.

*Winner of the 2019 Macavity Award for Best First Novel* *Nominated for 2019 Barry, Lambda Literary, Strand, and Anthony Awards* A lurid crime scene photo of a beautiful woman arrives on mystery writer Bunny Prescott's doorstep with no return address—and it's not the first time she's seen it. The reemergence of the photo, taken fifty-five years earlier, sets her on a journey to reconstruct the vicious summer that changed her life. In the summer of 1945, Ceola Bliss is a lonely twelve-year-old tomboy, mourning the loss of her brother, Robbie, who was declared missing in the Pacific. She tries to piece together his life by rereading his favorite pulp detective story “A Date with Death” and spending time with his best friend, Jay Greenwood, in Royal Oak, VA. One unforgettable August day, Jay leads Ceola and Bunny to a stretch of woods where he found a dead woman, but when they arrive, the body is gone. They soon discover a local woman named Lily Vellum is missing and begin to piece together the threads of her murder, starting with the photograph Jay took of her abandoned body. As Ceola gets swept up playing girl detective, Bunny becomes increasingly skeptical of Jay, and begins her own investigation into the connection between Jay and Lily. She discovers a series of clues that place doubt on Jay’s story about the photograph. She journeys to Washington, D.C., where she is forced to confront the brutal truth about her dear friend—a discovery that triggers a series of events that will bring tragedy to Jay and decades of estrangement between her and Ceola.