Shadow Notes A Clara Montague Mystery

Clara Montague is a whip-smart and wisecracking amateur detective who relies on her wits and an unusual "gift" rather than weapons or fists. It is contemporary murder mystery crafted by a writer with a gift for prose. You can go home again, but should you? Clara Montague didn’t want to go home to Connecticut for Christmas. Her mother Constance never seemed to like her—or her intuitive dreams about the people she loved. Clara tried to warn her mother that her father was about to have a heart attack, but Constance wouldn’t listen—and her father died. Now living in Europe, Clara dreams her mother is in terrible danger, and can’t ignore it. Shortly after she returns, her mother’s therapist (and former lover) Hugh Woodward is murdered—and Constance is jailed for the crime. Frantically seeking clues to her mother’s hidden past, Clara uncovers the file of “shadow notes” that Hugh maintained to document his sessions with her mother, but they are snatched from her hands before she can read them. Can Clara’s intuition help her peel back years of high-stakes secrets to identify the real murderer?

Laurel S. Peterson is an English professor and served as the inaugural Poet Laureate of Norwalk, Connecticut, for three years. She edited the poetry collection Oysterville: Poems and serves on the editorial board of the literary journal Inkwell. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks, That’s the Way the Music Sounds and Talking to the Mirror, and the full length poetry collection Do You Expect Your Art to Answer? She also co-edited a collection of essays on women’s justice titled (Re)Interpretations: The Shapes of Justice in Women’s Experience. Shadow Notes is one of The Clara Montague Mystery series and it will be followed by The Fallen in fall of 2020. She and her husband live in Connecticut.