A Chance for Your Own Copy of No Rest for the Dead is One Comment Away!
Write a comment or tweet the article to have your name submitted to the drawing!
WHAT: With a line up like this you can’t go wrong! Twenty-six bestselling authors have created a thriller that will keep you up all night. No Rest for the Dead will take you on a fast-paced, mystery with a great twist of an ending. The editing team of Andrew and Lamia Gulli have arranged to donate all proceeds from No Rest for the Dead (excluding contributor expenses) to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society
WHY: Read a review here! No Rest for the Dead Book Review http://readersentertainment.com/2011/no-rest-for-the-dead-review/
We have one free copy to give one lucky commenter or someone who tweets about the book.
“The lineup of writers who have contributed to this mystery is akin to the ‘Murderer’s Row’ of the 1927 New York Yankees. There is not a weak spot in the bunch.” —David Baldacci
HOW: It’s easy! Leave a comment and on Monday we will choose at random from the commenters and that person will get a copy of No Rest for the Dead!
Here’s a Sneak Peek!
Diary of Jon Nunn
ANDREW F. GULLI
August 2010
There is always that case, the one that keeps me awake at night, the one that got away. It’ll always be there, gnawing at the edges of my mind. It doesn’t matter that ten years have passed, it doesn’t matter that the case is officially closed. An innocent woman was executed, I was the one who helped make it happen, and on the sad night when the needle was inserted into her arm, injecting her with death, part of my life ended too.
Back then, I thought I was working a straightforward case, but every action I was taking was a step closer to ending it for Rosemary—destroying her life and mine. I thought I had the facts—the physical evidence: the bloodstained blouse, the missing button, her fingerprints; her contradictory answers during the investigation; the public argument she’d had with her husband after he demanded a divorce; her trip to Mexico the week he went missing when she’d told friends that she doubted Christopher would ever come back. Of course she was right. He never did come back, not alive.
Christopher Thomas’s badly decayed body was found inside an iron maiden in the German Historical Museum of Berlin several weeks later. It seemed like a simple case, crazy, but simple: in a fit of rage Rosemary Thomas killed her husband, then dragged his body inside the maiden because she knew that it was going to be shipped back to Germany.
It didn’t take long for the jury to convict her.
An open-and-shut case. And yet . . .
It never felt right, never made sense. Sure, there was motive and opportunity, there was the physical evidence, but if you met her, if you knew her the way I got to know her . . .
But it wasn’t until later, after I’d taken a step back from the case, that I realized it had angles I hadn’t seen, layers I hadn’t uncovered, back when it mattered, back when I could have saved her. Back when I was too busy making sure not to let any personal feelings for the suspect interfere with my duty. Back when I was standing too close to see anything clearly. Maybe some of you have seen the movie Vertigo. Well, picture me as the guy who is manipulated like a puppet and whose life unravels as a result.
Luckily, I had a friend.
When I was lost and close to suicide after Sarah left, Tony Olsen picked me up and never let me feel that I was a burden, or that he was doing me any favors. When I was drinking myself into oblivion, it was Tony who brought me to his home, made sure I stayed away from drink, and gave me a job handling security for his firm. The crazy thing is he’d also been a friend of Rosemary’s . . . you’d think after what I had done he’d want me dead.
I gave up drinking but the ghosts remained, and for years, both drunk and sober, I’ve fantasized about getting all the suspects together, all those I’d mistakenly ruled out, getting at the facts and exacting justice, for Rosemary, for her kids, for my own life.
It took me a long time, but I managed to convince Tony to help me. I needed closure, and it could only come from a second bite of that poisoned apple. It’s why now, all these years later, I need to get the principals together in one place. I need to confront the people who might have done it.
But Tony was right—we couldn’t just ask them to come together to give me another crack at solving the case. We talked a lot about it, how we could get them all together, but the answer was there all the time—the memorial that Rosemary had requested in her last will and testament, to commemorate the tenth anniversary of her death. The innocent would pay their respects. The guilty would attend to avoid rousing suspicion. And why worry? Rosemary had been found guilty and executed. No DA in his right mind was going to reopen the case. They would all come, I was sure of it, some of them wearing innocence like a mask.
I’ve been an agnostic all my life. I’ve never believed in anything. I can’t imagine the phoenix rising from the ashes. From what I’ve seen, ashes always remain ashes, and sooner or later everything rots and decays. But with this idea of bringing them together, of finally uncovering the guilty party, I was going to resurrect myself.
You’re probably thinking I’m just a policeman obsessed with a case he couldn’t crack. But you’re wrong. It’s more than that. I have to know the truth: the truth about Rosemary and the truth about who really killed Christopher Thomas. You see, I have to find out who destroyed my life, who slept well the night Rosemary Thomas knew she’d never again see the bright morning through her cold prison bars.
Brown, Sandra; Baldacci, David; R.L. Stine; Lisa Scottoline; Jeffery Deaver; David Baldacci (2011-07-05). No Rest for the Dead (pp. 2-4). Touchstone.
