#MidweekMystery: Death by Design: A DIY Diva Mystery by Paula Darnell and The McKinley Mysteries by Carolyn Arnold

Death by Design

DIY Diva Laurel McMillan rejoices when her student Jennifer’s peacock pillow wins a design contest; that is, until Jennifer’s husband Matt is smothered with the very same pillow.

When the police confiscate her prize-winning pillow, Jennifer freaks out, and Laurel fears that Jennifer may be more upset about losing the pillow than about Matt’s death. But the police arrest disgraced nurse Edna Elkins, not Jennifer. Begging Laurel to find the real killer, Edna insists she’s innocent, but Laurel’s not so sure, and when Laurel encounters Jennifer while walking her lovable Labrador retriever, Bear, she’s left with more questions than answers. Should the crafty DIY Diva play DIY Detective or does Edna really belong in jail?

Includes recipes and pillow project instructions.


About the Author

Paula Darnell

An instructor at five colleges over the years, Paula Darnell most often taught the dreaded first-year English composition classes, but she’s also been happy to teach some fun classes, such as fashion design, sewing, and jewelry making. Paula has a Bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Iowa, Iowa City, and a Master’s degree in English from the University of Nevada, Reno.

Like Laurel, the main character in Death by Association, Paula enjoys all kinds of arts and crafts. Some of her memorable projects include making a hat and a cape to wear to Royal Ascot, sewing wedding gowns for both her daughters, exhibiting her textile and mixed-media artwork in juried art shows, and having one of her jewelry projects accepted for inclusion in Leather Jewelry, published by Lark Books. She sells some of her jewelry and hair accessories in her Etsy shop: www.etsy.com/shop/PaulaDJewelry.

Paula’s interest in DIY craft projects and fashion led to her writing hundreds of articles for print and online national publications.

Living in a guard-gated community governed by a homeowners’ association gave Paula the idea for the setting of Death by Association. She finds that residing in an HOA community can be both a blessing and a curse. A Happy-New-Year greeting from her community association called on residents to “start the new year by reviewing your Rules and Regulations booklet,” something unlikely to top anyone’s list of New Year’s resolutions.

Paula lives in Las Vegas, Nevada, with her husband Gary and their 110-pound dog Rocky, whose favorite pastime is lurking in the kitchen, hoping for a handout

Author Links

Author’s website – https://www.pauladarnellauthor.com/

Twitter – https://twitter.com/PaulaJDarnell

Goodreads – https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/18782445.Paula_Darnell

Pinterest – https://www.pinterest.com/paulad0057/

Etsy shop – https://www.etsy.com/shop/PaulaDJewelry

Purchase Links – Amazon


The McKinley Mysteries

Romance. Humor. Murder.  Meet former detectives Sean and Sara McKinley. When a billionaire leaves them all his money, they no longer have to work, but they find themselves sticking to what they’re good at—solving murders. Undercover, off the books, and around the world, they’ll get to the bottom of things…and romance it up along the way.

This is the perfect book series for fans of Hart to HartCastleColomboMonkRockford FilesPsych, and Magnum PI.

Book Overview (in published order)

The Day Job is Murder (2014)
Vacation is Murder (2014)
Money is Murder (2014)
Politics is Murder (2014)
Family is Murder (2014)
Shopping is Murder (2014)
Christmas is Murder (2014)
Valentine’s Day is Murder (2015)
Coffee is Murder (2015)
Skiing is Murder (2016)
Halloween is Murder (2017)

The Day Job is Murder

The bad guys aren’t the only ones on his radar…

For Albany PD homicide detective Sean McKinley, catching killers is the easy part of his job. Working next to his beautiful partner, Sara Cain, is what’s difficult. It might have something to do with the fact that he’s fallen in love with her, though. Fortunately, she feels the same way about him. But she’s convinced they should just be friends.

If only there was some way to change her mind…

Vacation is Murder

This wasn’t in the travel brochure…

There’s only so much relaxation two former detectives can handle—even if they’re on their honeymoon. With their recent fall into money, Sean and Sara McKinley should be living it up, enjoying the sun and beaches of Cancun. But heading into their third week they’ve had just about enough lying around.

When the husband of a couple they’ve befriended is kidnapped and held for ransom, it has the McKinleys putting their experience to use. As they set out in the unfamiliar landscape of paradise, the investigation will have them risking their lives to stop a killer.

 

Money is Murder

It’s in the fine print…

Old Man Quinn left Sean more than his billions–he left him a murder to solve.

Inside the chest given to him from the executor of Quinn’s Will, Sean finds a key and implicit instruction that the contents are for his eyes only. After Sean discovers where the key fits, he finds another letter–Quinn wants a closed case reopened, and Sean is shocked to learn who the victim was.

As Sean and his wife, Sara, uncover clues, it leads them from the back rooms of Quinn’s corporation to the streets of New York City, but they will stop at nothing to get to the truth.

     

Politics is Murder

There’s no time for a debate…

Sean and Sara’s popularity as a murder-solving duo has gained momentum. But it’s not until it comes time for a local television interview that they meet Reanne Mable and end up finding themselves involved with a high-profile investigation.
Reanne is the sister-in-law of Albany’s Mayor Davenport and his daughter, Halie, has gone missing from her university campus. With a desire to keep the matter out of the media spotlight, Davenport turns to Sean and Sara to find her. But with the police already investigating the matter, taking this case would pit them against their friends from the police department, including their former sergeant Jimmy Voigt.
As time moves on, though, the fate of the girl is not up for a vote, and the McKinleys set out to find out what really happened. With the mayor taking the heat for a recently passed zoning bylaw, is an enraged small business owner behind Halie’s disappearance? Or did she simply grow tired of living in her father’s limelight and run away?
To get the answers, Sean and Sara will need to use all the resources at their disposal and may have to call upon their good friend Jimmy for help, after all.

 

Family is Murder

If only there were someone to clean up this mess…

Sean and Sara McKinley put out an ad for a maid, but they never expected Sara’s birth mother to apply—or at least that’s who the woman is claiming she is. While Sean is suspicious of her true identity and motive, Sara opens her heart to the woman. But when a dead body turns up soon after Sara’s supposed mother takes off without so much as a good-bye, they both start to question the truth.

Could they have welcomed a killer into their home and not even known it?

 

Shopping is Murder

They find more than a bargain…

Black Friday should be all about shopping and discounts, but when Sean and Sara only have a few more items left to buy, screams fill the mall—and for good reason. A man has fallen to his death from the second level.

But what exactly happened isn’t that straightforward, and normally, Sean and Sara would leave this matter to the police, but the widow was a childhood friend of Sara’s. While the police are leaning toward the belief the man intentionally took the leap, the widow is adamant her husband would never jump and asks Sara for her help.

Despite the fact there is an unresolved past between the friends—in which Sara feels she let her down—Sara can’t turn her back on her now. Fueled by guilt and the need to find answers, Sara convinces Sean they should look into the man’s death.

But the answers aren’t all coming quickly. Mall security has dropped the ball and there’s no seeming motive for murder. To find out the truth will take unconventional means, a little undercover work, and the help of their friend Jimmy. And if it all comes together, they just might have this case wrapped up in time for the holidays. Maybe even with a pretty little bow.

Christmas is Murder

Mistletoe and mischief…

Albany’s the perfect image of a winter wonderland, and Sean and Sara’s friend Jimmy is going to be Santa Claus for the upcoming Christmas parade. The trees and decorations have been selected and the gifts have been purchased. The season has truly cast its magical spell–until Sean and Sara’s neighbors die in a horrible house fire.

While the fire department ruled holiday-related hazards as the cause, Sara suspects there’s more to it. Her determination to find the truth has her and Sean toeing the line between what’s legal and what’s not.

As they sort out fact from fiction, the McKinleys make the final decision about whether or not they should open a private investigation firm.

Valentine’s Day is Murder

Cupid’s arrow may have missed its mark…

Jimmy finally takes a vacation–and a chance on love–only to be abducted. His female companion originally thinks he had cold feet about their relationship, but Sean and Sara know there’s more to it. Jimmy isn’t the type to just up and disappear, let alone leave a lady stranded.

Setting out on their private jet, Sean and Sara reach the tropical paradise of Ocho Rios, Jamaica with sightseeing as the last thing on their minds.

With a gold coin being their initial tie to Jimmy’s kidnapper, Sean and Sara even speculate about the involvement of pirates. Yet as the hours pass, and there’s no word from Jimmy’s captors, Sean and Sara will need to figure out the real motive before it’s too late.

With help from their friend, Adam, back in Albany, the pieces come together and not a moment too soon.

Coffee is Murder

A cup a day won’t kill you, but a few might.

Their first case as private investigators have Sean, Sara, and Jimmy neck-deep in coffee beans trying to find a killer. With their client certain that her mother was poisoned through her coffee of the month club, it has them setting out to Williamsburg, Virginia. But instead of approaching matters from the traditional standpoint, Sean and Sara brew a robust plot and stir Jimmy into the blend, all to get close to their top suspect and grind out the truth.

Going undercover at Tasty Beans, the coffee company, the three of them work to expose the culprit before anyone else dies.

Skiing is Murder

They’re ready to hit the slopes when things go downhill…

Sean and Sara are supposed to have a relaxing vacation in Vail, but it all goes up in a puff of powder when there’s a suspicious death on the mountain. And the deceased is not just anyone; it’s Adrian Blackwell, a two-time Olympic skiing gold medalist.

Rumor has it Adrian died in a skiing accident, but he was too skilled for Sara to accept that as fact. But she doesn’t want to disappoint Sean by ruining his ski trip, even though she’s convinced Adrian was murdered and she’s itching to find the killer.

Sean has never been able to say no to Sara, but this time he plans to. However, all it takes is a call from their PI firm back in Albany to change his mind. A job’s come in to investigate Adrian’s death, and his agent is the one footing the bill, leaving Sean with more questions than answers.

Yet one major problem remains: their New York State PI licenses hold no legal authority in Colorado. They still can’t help but look into Adrian’s death on the sly, though. This case will definitely involve some underhanded tactics, all while trying to dodge the local police over the course of the investigation.

Beware of all that goes bump in the night…

Sean and Sara McKinley are excited about the haunted house they’ve set up as a Halloween charity fund-raiser, but things take a ghoulish turn when the reporter covering their story is found dead. With the media keeping mum about how she died, Sara’s curiosity is piqued, and she convinces Sean to take on the investigation through their PI firm. But this case is not without its challenges. The police are actively investigating it, as well, and it’s not even clear that the woman was murdered. It will take a little cloak-and-dagger, dress-up, and finesse for the McKinleys to get to the bottom of it, but they aren’t the kind to give up. As they troll for leads and work through the skeletons in the reporter’s closet, they unearth a few suspects, but they’ll need to carve out the whole truth if they’re going to find her killer. If they do so fast enough, there might even be time for a little trick-or-treating.


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About The Author  
CAROLYN ARNOLD is the international bestselling and award-winning author of the Madison Knight, Brandon Fisher, and McKinley Mystery series. She is the only author with POLICE PROCEDURALS RESPECTED BY LAW ENFORCEMENT™.
Carolyn was born in a small town, but that never kept her from dreaming big. On par with her large dreams is her overactive imagination that conjures up killers and cases to solve. She currently lives outside Toronto with her husband and two beagles, Max and Chelsea. She is also a member of Crime Writers of Canada.
For more information and a FREE book offer, visit her website:
www.carolynarnold.net
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Can a reasoning test predict who will make a good detective?

GettyImages-118096569.jpgBy Alex Fradera
Although criminal investigation has been transformed through technological developments in DNA, phone tracking, and online data, the way a detective works through a crime has remained much the same. The first suspect is often the true perpetrator, but not always, and snowballing biases continue to lead to miscarriages of justice. Proficient detectives need the ability to generate and evaluate different explanations and keep an open mind. New research in the Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology investigates whether it’s possible to use established tests of reasoning ability to identify who has the skills necessary for thinking this way.
University of Gothenburg psychologists Ivar Fahsing and Karl Ask asked 166 recruits (60 women, aged around 23) from the Norwegian Police University College to complete two tests of reasoning ability. One involved deductive reasoning – the ability to apply rules to reach a correct conclusion, in this case, combining shapes to form a new target shape. The other involved inductive reasoning –  viewing different images, and using these to figure out the rule that is governing them all. These tests already feature in Norwegian police recruitment but it’s not clear whether they are useful for predicting detective skills, which are more dependent on abductive reasoning, which is much harder to test.
Whereas deduction seeks linear, definitive conclusions, and induction tries to identify a category based on the available clues (“all birds, none fly”  therefore the category must be “flightless birds”), abduction amplifies the known information to generate imaginative possibilities (“an open wine bottle and smashed glasses could suggest a thwarted seduction… or a failed reconciliation with his wife?”). It requires a leap of logic, a creative act, hard to measure but known to differentiate stronger investigators, whether criminal or scientific. The ability to make many such leaps helps avoid premature foreclosure on the possibilities of a case.
Fahsing and Ask were hopeful that measures of deductive and inductive reasoning would help identify better detectives because investigation isn’t rooted solely in abduction, and because different forms of reasoning ability are known to correlate (so a candidate skilful at deduction and induction ought to be skilled at abduction and therefore detective thinking too).
To assess detection nous, the researchers asked their participants to review two case vignettes, each describing a woman missing under ambiguous circumstances, and some versions also mentioned the arrest of a suspect. The participants’ task was to outline all the possible explanations that could account for the facts. Both vignettes had been reviewed by an expert panel of detectives, who generated a “gold standard” of 9 viable hypotheses for the first and 11 for the second.
The participants tended to neglect the non-criminal hypotheses, such as the possibility the missing woman had suffered an accident. More importantly, scores on the reasoning ability tests didn’t predict their detective performance. Nor did they predict immunity to a commonly observed detecting error: becoming more narrow-minded (generating fewer hypotheses) after reading that a suspect had been arrested.
The current data suggest that commonly used cognitive assessments are unlikely to help identify candidates with the best aptitude for becoming a detective. It seems police forces will need to think more inventively about the actual skills that contribute to good detection if they are to succeed in separating the Maigrets from the Clouseaus.
— In Search of Indicators of Detective Aptitude: Police Recruits’ Logical Reasoning and Ability to Generate Investigative Hypotheses
Image: Peter Sellers In ‘The Pink Panther Strikes Again’ is disguised as a mountain climber, while hiding in a trash can, in a scene from the film ‘The Pink Panther Strikes Again’, 1976. (Photo by United Artists/Getty Images)
Alex Fradera (@alexfradera) is Staff Writer at BPS Research Digest


from BPS Research Digest http://bit.ly/2ovmSuq


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