Murder at the Kennedy Center (43 page)

When the senior curator at Washington’s famed National Gallery finds a missing painting by the Renaissance master Caravaggio, he mounts a world-class exhibition—and plots a brilliant forgery scheme that will stun the art world.

But an artful deception suddenly becomes a portrait of blackmail and murder—as gallery owner and part-time sleuth Annabel Reed-Smith and her husband go searching for clues in the heady arena of international art and uncover a rare collection of unscrupulous characters that leads all the way to Italy.

“A thrilling chase.”
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Publishers Weekly

The chief engineer on Project Safekeep, an antimissile system under contract to the Pentagon, is murdered and a senior CIA official is accused of the crime. Major Margit Falk is a combat pilot and a lawyer with little trial experience who must defend the man accused of murder in the Pentagon. The closer Margit comes to the truth, the more she realizes that her career, her love of the military, and her life are in dire jeopardy.

“Margaret Truman has become a first-rate mystery writer.”
—
Los Angeles Times Book Review

Murder didn’t stop Mac Smith and Annabel Reed from falling in love, or from getting married at the glorious church on the hill in Washington, D.C., the National Cathedral. But the brutal murder of a friend drags them from their newlywed bliss into an unholy web of intrigue and danger.

The body is found in the cathedral. There are scant clues and no suspects. And to further complicate matters, a parallel crime is committed at a church in England’s Cotswolds, where the honeymooners have recently been visitors. Across the sea go the Smiths again, and straight into the center of an ungodly plot of secret agents, a playboy priest, a frustrated lover, and a murder so perfect it’s a sin.

“A vigorous tale of twists and turns… An authentic thriller.”
—
The Washington Post Book World

The doctors call literary agent Barrie Mayer’s death a heart attack, but her best friend, Collette Cahill, has her doubts. A CIA agent herself, Collette knows that Barrie was carrying more than just contracts to Hungary. Then Collette gets the orders from above: Find out what happened to Barrie. And, more important, what happened to her briefcase.

So Collette sets off on a search that takes her from restaurants to psychiatrists’ offices to bedrooms. After all—even CIA agents lose their hearts every now and then. But Collette may lose her life.…

“Her most far-ranging and, arguably, her best.”
—
New Woman

Valerie Frolich, the beautiful twenty-year-old daughter of New Jersey senator John Frolich, was among the youngest guests at the elegant Georgetown party. Her provocative dancing raised a few eyebrows—but could someone have found it distasteful enough to kill her?

Assigned to report on her murder is Joe Potamos, of
The Washington Post
’s police beat. What he finds out about Valerie—a top-notch journalism student as well as a heart-breaker of men young and old—leads to a number of startling questions about Georgetown’s most powerful men and women.

Someone from above does not like Potamos’s particular brand of reporting, and he is pulled off the case. But Potamos is in too deep to stop investigating. And as the smell of corruption in high places becomes stronger, he realizes that it’s not just his job that’s at stake. It’s his life.

“A smooth-running, fast-moving narrative.”
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Chicago Sun-Times