Reading A New Texas Author

Disclaimer: The term "new" is relative. Kathryn Casey is an established author but she is a new to me since this is the first time I have read her. She is a journalist who has written true crime books and two books (with the third coming out in fall of 2010) in a mystery series featuring Sarah Armstrong - a profiler with the Texas Rangers. Her web site is http://www.kathryncasey.com/.

Now ..., let me tell you about the book I read - Singularity. It is the first in the series and introduces Sarah Armstrong. As I mentioned before, she is a profiler with the Texas Rangers and works out of the Greater Houston area. For those who know me, you can imagine how excited I was since I love Texas mysteries and my original stomping grounds was the Houston area. Anyway ... back to Sarah. She was married to another Texas Ranger who died before this book takes place. She lives with her daughter and her mother on a small ranch.

The term "singularity" was first introduced in the book by Sarah's daughter Maggie. She is doing a science fair project and it is on "singularity". As she describes it in the book, it is "the center of a black hole - the vortex." "Some scientists think it rips apart stars and gobbles them up. But others think the stars get caught in the vortex and it crunches them down to space dust and spits most of it back out. But it's destruction for any star that gets too close."

Now you may be wondering what stars and vortexes have to do with a Texas Ranger in this story? It is the concept!!!

The book opens with a murder in Galveston for which Sarah is called into to investigate. Some other influential people want to tie the murder to the wife of the man who was murdered but Sarah sees it differently. She does not see it as a murder for hire situation but the work of somebody with a truly evil mind. She even believes this is the work of a serial killer and starts her investigation with this in mind.

It isn't long before she finds similarities in a previous murder of an older lady in the small town of Bardwell. When another similar murder of a doctor occurs in Fort Worth, she is certain of a connection. And it isn't too long afterwards that a leak of information to the press about her investigation leads to letters from the killer to her at her office. This is where the concept of singularity is related - as she gets closer to the truth, she gets drawn into the killer's attention.

I do not want to let on how far it goes because that could take away your incentive to read the book for yourself. One thing I will tell you is that I am definitely going to read more by this author. What can I say? This definitely meets my criteria for the kinds of mysteries I like to read - Texas author, Texas Sleuth, and Texas mystery location.