Paul Bishop

Croaker Paul Bishop

Top Los Angeles police detective and author Paul Bishop brings gripping authenticity and power to Chalk Whispers, his latest poignant and revealing novel featuring L. A. P. D. Detective Fey Croaker. Never one to avoid a challenge, Fey knows she'll face both jealousy and hostility on her promotion to lieutenant in the elite Robbery-Homicide Division, but she and her team encounter something far more dangerous and disturbing when their first case is the torture-murder of prominent lawyer Bianca Flynn, the daughter of a judge and sister of one of Los Angeles's police commissioners.

Fey and her crew - the enigmatic married couple, Arch Hammersmith and Rhonda Lawless (a.k.a. Hammer and Nails), Brindle Jones and her partner, Alphabet Cohen, and Fey's second-in-command, Monk Lawson - must search Bianca Flynn's past to try to find clues to her murder. One promising avenue is Bianca's work for an illegal underground railroad seeking to protect children from sexually predatory parents. As the investigation twists into ever-tightening circles, Fey must also probe the strange death of Ellis Kavanaugh, one-time police force partner of Fey's abusive father. Is Kavanaugh's death connected to Flynn's? Why did the old man leave Fey a briefcase filled with hundred-dollar bills, and who chased him to his death beneath frightened horses on a racetrack?

In a novel that reaches into the past to illuminate the tragedies of today, Paul Bishop reveals a vulnerable Fey Croaker readers have never seen before, and will not soon forget. Chalk Whispers delivers a knock-out punch in this riveting series from an author who combines the hard-earned authority of the professional police officer with the narrative gift of the born storyteller.