The Wages of Sin
by Nancy Allen
on Tour April 26 - May 11, 2016
“The Elsie Arnold series deserves to run and run.”— Alex Marwood, author of The Wicked Girls and The Killer Next Door
In rural McCown County, Missouri, a young pregnant woman is found beaten to death in a trailer park. The only witness to the murder is Ivy, her six-year-old daughter, who points to her mom’s boyfriend—father of the unborn child. County prosecutor Madeleine Thompson promises the community justice, and in the Ozarks, that can only mean one thing: a death sentence.
When Madeleine’s first choice for co-counsel declines to try a death penalty case, she is forced to turn to assistant prosecutor Elsie Arnold. Elsie is reluctant to join forces with her frosty boss, but the road to conviction seems smooth—until unexpected facts about the victim arise, and the testimony of the lone eyewitness Ivy becomes increasingly crucial. Against Elsie’s advice, Madeleine brings in the state attorney general’s office to assist them, while cutthroat trial attorney Claire O’Hara joins the defense.
Elsie will not let the power of prosecution—of seeking justice—be wrested from her without a fight. She wants to win the case, and to avenge the death of the mother and her unborn child. But as the trial nears, Elsie begins to harbor doubts about the death penalty itself. Meanwhile, the child Ivy is in greater danger than anyone knows.
“Unflinching and gritty.” — Library Journal
Book Details:
Genre: Legal Thriller, Crime Published by: Witness Impulse Publication Date: 04/26/2016 Number of Pages: 320 ISBN: 0062438751 (9780062438751) Series: An Ozarks Mystery, 3rd | Each is a Stand Alone Thriller
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Author Bio:
Nancy Allen practiced law for 15 years as Assistant Missouri Attorney General and Assistant Prosecutor in her native Ozarks. She has tried over 30 jury trials, including murder and sexual offenses, and is now a law instructor at Missouri State University. Her first novel,The Code of the Hills, was published by HarperCollins in 2014. The Wages of Sin, is the third book in her Ozarks mystery series.
Catch Up with Nancy Allen:
Guest Post:
THE WAGES OF SIN: Meet the Main
Character, Elsie Arnold
By Nancy Allen
Elsie Arnold, the prosecutor at the heart of THE
WAGES OF SIN, is a native of the Ozarks. Still single at thirty-one, she’s not
a typical country girl; Elsie has more in common with Amy Schumer than with
Michelle Duggar. She is a foul-mouthed, beer guzzling, hearty-eating wild woman
of the Ozarks who spends more time sitting on a barstool than in a church pew.
Though she fights like a tiger in the courtroom,
commanding the most impressive trial record in the county, Elsie makes errors
of judgment. She scandalizes her strait-laced boss, Madeleine, with drunken
antics at the Baldknobbers bar. She shoots off her mouth to the local clergy
and the judges.
But although Elsie is flawed, a mixed bag, her heart
is in the right place; and she is passionately dedicated to the goal of seeing
justice done in her neck of the woods. And she has important work to do. Because, though the Ozarks is located in the
buckle of the Bible Belt, it is an area fraught with crime: murder, incest,
meth, and a long history of violence against women. Elsie is determined to
fight the good fight in the courts of southwest Missouri on behalf of the
victims of crime. In THE WAGES OF SIN, Elsie takes on her first death penalty
case, against a man who beat his eight-months-pregnant girlfriend to death with
a baseball bat.
Then, at the end of a long day wearing the white
hat, Elsie takes it off. And puts on her party hat. I hope you’ll discover that
Elsie Arnold is a heroine who’s as fresh as a new batch of moonshine!
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