Glimpse, The Beautiful Deaths by @StephenBKing1 is a Mystery and Suspense Festival pick #thriller
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  • N. N. Light
    • Aug 13, 2020
    • 6 min read

Glimpse, The Beautiful Deaths by @StephenBKing1 is a Mystery and Suspense Festival pick #thriller



Title: Glimpse, The Beautiful Deaths (Book 2, Deadly Glimpses Series)

Author: Stephen B King

Genre: Psychological Thriller/Suspense/Police Procedural

Book Blurb:

Rick McCoy of the Major Crime Squad is trying to repair his marriage when he is sent to the South of Western Australia. A young girl’s body has been found in a cave, with flowers on her chest. A search finds five more bodies. Beautiful criminal psychologist, Patricia Holmes, has recovered from her stab wounds inflicted by the serial killer PPP, and is brought in. Pat believes they are hunting a man who is addicted to beauty. When another school girl goes missing, they have only days before she too will die. As their desire for each other grows and the pressure on their marriages increase, they close in on the man responsible for the beautiful deaths. Meanwhile, in the high-security wing of the mental health hospital, PPP plans his revenge on Rick.

Excerpt:

They finished their main courses almost simultaneously, when Tyler broached the subject again. “Pat, I’ve been wracking my brain trying to figure out what you meant with that riddle you hit me with. I can’t get it, so tell me: when is a serial killer not a murderer?”

She pushed her chair back a little, crossed one leg over the other, and looked as if she was getting comfortable. She sipped slowly from her glass, her arms folded over her ample breasts, and looked at him steadily. “Tyler, no criticism of you, but Rick got it straight away. Perhaps that’s why you work so well together, you see the same things differently which gives you discussion points and ideas to bounce off each other. Our guy isn’t murdering these girls; though he is causing them to die. I don’t think that’s what he wants. His intention is not to kill them. I think when they pass away, he is genuinely upset and remorseful. I mean really sad and hurt; devastated even.”

“How can you possibly know that? Forgive me, but it just sounds like fiction.”

“Oh, Tyler I don’t take offence, I’ve put up with that kind of skepticism for years. Ok, let me put it this way: I can only think of one scenario that fits all the bits and pieces I’ve seen so far. True I don’t know anything. I’m just trying to interpret what I see and find a plausible explanation. As I said on the last case I worked with you guys, my profiling effort can be something like twenty percent inaccurate, but, eighty is a pass so far as I’m concerned. Maybe I’m wrong, so first you tell me what you think is going on here?”

“Well it’s pretty obvious he is abducting girls and imprisoning them until they die, then dumping their bodies here.”

“Why? And when you figure that out, then tell me why leave them here? Here’s the best question; if you know those answers, what does all that tell you about the perpetrator?”

“I don’t know any of that; I never have got involved in that kind of stuff. But, when we get some evidence, forensic results, and the full postmortem, hopefully, we will find those answers then.”

He sounded defensive and just a little agitated, Rick thought. “But, Tyler, what if we don’t get any usable evidence, what then?” He asked as he swirled the dregs of wine around and around his glass.

“Then we do what we do best, and we investigate. For example, when we know the identity of the victims, we can look at all their acquaintances.”

“I don’t believe these girls knew him, not well, anyway. He isn’t a bad uncle, or their local priest. There will be nothing that connects the girls to each other, except for their looks,” Pat said as she finished her glass and held it out to Rick for him to top up.

“How can you say that?”

“It’s obvious, Tyler. The clothes are all different. There are three different school uniforms, one of which is Whitfords High School by the way, my niece goes there. I recognized the emblem on her blazer from the picture.”

“Now you’ve got my interest,” Rick said as he topped up her glass. “What do you mean by: it’s only their looks that connect them?”

She took the glass from him, took a sip, and looked at the deep red color as she too swirled it around. “Okay, as you’ve bought me a very nice dinner, and I am out with two very handsome men I will tell you what I think. Now, let me repeat I reckon I could be wrong about some things, but, for me that would be acceptable. And, if the eighty per cent is good enough, it should help somewhere along the line to assist in catching him. Ready?”

“Oh, I can’t wait,” Tyler said and Rick glanced at him, fearing his sarcasm could upset Pat.

She smiled, “Oh Tyler, I do so love a challenge when it’s thrown down. Here goes: Firstly, the person we are looking for is male, he must be, so far as I can see. I know I said earlier it could have been a woman, but it’s not. Our man has led a sheltered life, almost monastic by let’s say any normal standards. Loving, not physically cruel, but he had overbearing parents, and one, or both, are probably still alive. He visits them often. I would think because by doing so it anchors him in his past, and he likes being there. He has always been on the submissive side, and his parents have used that side of him forever. I do not mean sexually submissive, I mean he is malleable, and a stronger personality will dominate him. His life changed, when he grew up, but sometimes he hates the way it has changed. I think he is married to someone who is, or was once, beautiful, but who also has a domineering personality. Submissive men are generally drawn to strong women, because they feel better when decisions are made for them. From time to time though, he would rebel against that dominance. It could be in small ways, but occasionally he needs to re-assert himself, to remind himself he is a man, and not a mouse, if that makes sense.”

Rick was fascinated, but Tyler appeared less so. He displayed a bored air. If Pat noticed, she ignored it.

“Our man likes beautiful things, in fact, it’s more than like. He is drawn to beauty like a moth to the light. Flower arranging is one of the ways he does this. I think he makes the wreaths himself. I’d give you much better than even odds on that. I’d say he is a keen gardener, and his flower beds will be stunning, and when you visit his home, as I am sure you will sooner or later. There, you will find his arrangements displayed predominantly. I think he has also been a collector; it would be something like stunning African butterflies, exotic postage stamps, or porcelain china dolls, something like that. Things that to him, look exquisite. I can’t stress this enough, beauty is his thing, but in an obsessive-compulsive way. So, he loves beauty and in a way, his wife, and parents before her, stopped him from enjoying all the beautiful things he craves. His day to day, mundane life gets in the way, if you like, so he lives in a bit of a fantasy land dreaming of all the beautiful things he could possess, if only he were allowed.”

“Pat, are you saying he wanted to collect these girls because they were beautiful?” Rick asked, incredulously.

Buy Links (including Goodreads and BookBub):


Why is your featured book a must-read?

The Glimpse series provides three thrilling hunts for serial killers, while exploring the desire between Rick, the police detective, and Patricia Holmes, the married glamorous criminal psychologist brought in as a consultant to work with him. In each story, the reader is also given a glimpse into the tortured mind of the murderer.

Giveaway –

Enter to win an e-book bundle of all 42 books featured in the Mystery and Suspense Bookish Event:

Open Internationally.

Runs August 11 – 17, 2020.

Winner will be drawn on August 24, 2020.


Author Biography:

I have eleven books published, with Winter at the Light being number twelve. I won several short story competitions, published poetry and wrote music and lyrics in my long-haired rock band days as a guitarist, so I have been telling stories most of my, what seems like, very long life.

Winter at the Light is my latest release with my wonderful publisher, The Wild Rose Press of NY. For my first book, Forever Night I was contracted to a UK publisher who shall remain. Before publication that publisher was bought out and the new owners (one of the big four) cancelled the line I was contracted to, which left me in publishing wilderness for a while.

I self-published my next four books until two years later, I signed with The Wild Rose Press to publish Thirty-Three Days. I followed up that with the Deadly Glimpses Trilogy and soon the trilogy will comprise five books – who knew you could do that? I wrote Winter at the Light, while simultaneously completing the fourth Glimpse book, titled Glimpse, the Angel Shot. Two more different tales you could never read.

Social Media Links:

twitter: @stephenBKing1

Facebook: @stephenbkingauthor

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