Murder by Elf

THE ULTIMATE CHRISTMAS MURDER MYSTERY.A holiday tradition. This novel is about a criminal organization that is secretly running a top theme park mall, like a Mall of America. When a security guard shows up dead under their main Christmas tree, Darby Weston investigates. With the help of his new girlfriend Carissa, and her irrepressible sister, they risk their lives trying to bring the murderers to justice.This is the special holiday edition, where the elves are real. A real hoot. They look like us, live among us, but they ain't us!Meet Carissa and Ylva. The two sisters are different as night and day. Carissa is posh and philosophical. Ylva is an irrepressible nut; at least according to her older sister. In this version, they're also secret agents.Crime reporter Darby Weston runs into the sisters when covering a mysterious murder at a theme park. And he falls madly in love with Carissa. Never guessing she's not quite human ... A security guard, during the midnight hour, was checking the cavernous subbasements under the theme park. He had just stepped out of the elevator when he spotted a short gruff man with a 2-day growth of whiskers. A man dressed in an elf costume. One of those cosplay crazies, the guard assumed."What are you doing down here?" the guard demanded.He was met with a hail of bullets.When the sun came up and the park opened, the park's customers stumbled over the guard's body.Somebody had moved it upstairs.The park called a news conference, and said it was an accident. The guard had simply "tripped and fallen off a balcony in the atrium." No mention of the elf with the whiskers and the barrage of bullets.Crime reporter Darby Weston broke into a fit of laughter. And he couldn't stop laughing until he started choking and coughing. "Sorry. I just need a glass of water," he said as he excused himself and left the room.The press corps stared at him as he went out the door. They wondered if he was drunk? Or high? Actually, he was a step ahead of them, and already on the trail of the killers.Darby does not believe in the supernatural. He doesn't care about cracked mirrors or walking under a ladder. And he certainly doesn't believe in elves. But he did believe in putting criminals behind bars. And he did want to know if this was some giant cover-up. Was this family them park as innocent as it looked? Or a den of thieves and con artists?A SAMPLE FROM THE BOOK: The Tunnel of Love ride, after the amusement park had closed for the night:[ 2021; Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.]All Carissa could hear was a spooky silence. It was so quiet, she could practically hear her heart beating. Thump, thump, thump ... "Let's get out of here," she whispered to Darby, not sure if she was just getting paranoid.Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a shadow move and she looked up just in time to see a white creature leap out from behind a bush. A ghostly apparition, as pale as an albino mountain gorilla. Like some kind of abominable snowman, human shaped with a thick coat of polar bear colored hair covering it from foot to head, hellish, angry, and running towards them ... 2024 G. Kerr