Galileo
When it comes to finding dirt, Evan Reed is the best in the business—she’s a dust-buster, a paid operative hired to vet candidates, political appointees, and judicial nominees.
Two years have passed since the unsavory events in Dust. Evan Reed is still cranky, but she’s also dealing with the nagging effects of a gunshot wound. Her teenage daughter, Stevie has a new discovery to share, and Stevie’s father, Dan, has married a woman half his age. Evan’s childhood pal, Father Tim, has started questioning his faith, and Evan’s relationship with publishing magnate, Julia Donne has all the earmarks of heading somewhere special.
The holidays are fast approaching when Evan is hired by the DNC to do dig up any undiscovered opposition research on the president’s controversial nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court. For starters, she has to work at light speed because the Senate is fast-tracking the nomination—and the judge, who is a darling of the far-right, is an avowed constructionist with a highly vetted paper trail nine miles long. The job begins to get murky when Evan discovers a link between the nominee and a now half-crazed, disgraced former U.S. senator who Evan was hired to vet many years ago. The stigma of that episode led Evan to vow to never work again for political kingmaker, Marcus Goldman, whose sticky fingerprints are all over this case.
And to make matters worse, Evan’s personal Moriarty, Maya Jindal, reappears—up to her shapely eyebrows in the middle of an expanding web of lies, secrets, and betrayals that shrouds everything in Evan’s life with hopelessness and uncertainty. The case takes an even more dangerous and eerily personal turn as Evan’s descent into the fetid subterranean world of vested interests, dark money PACs, and barbaric private rituals threaten to explode everything she thought she knew about Father Tim, her own conflicted religious beliefs, and any shot she might have had at a happy future with the Julia.
Dust, Book #1 of the Evan Reed Mystery Series
Galileo, Book #2 of the Evan Reed Mystery Series
Awards and Honors
Winner—2020 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Mystery
Silver Medal—2020 Independent Publishers Book Awards for Mystery Novel
Winner—2020 Golden Crown Literary Society (Goldie) Award for Humorous Novel
Shortlist—202- Golden Crown Literary Society Ann Bannon Award
PRAISE FOR GALILEO
“It took courage to write Galileo, to take on its controversial themes, and it took talent to write it this exquisitely—Ann McMan has courage and talent by the bucket load. Galileo is powerful, elegant—and in the best tradition of storytelling—a page-turner that is impossible to put down.” —ANN APTAKER, Lambda Literary Award-winning author of the Cantor Gold Mystery Series
“McMan’s characters clash and smash and carom off one another as if in heavy surf. And indeed, the heavy surf is the current zeitgeist, which McMan understands and portrays adroitly. Her subplots are complex and relevant.” —ELIZABETH SIMS, Lambda Literary Award-winning author of the Lillian Byrd Mystery Series
“Galileo is the work of a mature writer who has full control of her story and characters and dares to delve deeply into the eternal moral predicaments of human experience. Ann McMan writes with fierce intelligence and a sympathetic heart. In Galileo, she once again elevates lesbian literature.” —LEE LYNCH, trailblazing author of The Swashbuckler
“Galileo is a tight, well-paced, and timely mystery that handles dark subjects with a light and sure touch—Ann McMan is a wonderful writer.” —MICHAEL NAVA, Lambda Literary Award-winning author of the Henry Rios Mystery Series
“Ann McMan’s newest Evan Reed mystery, Galileo, tackles a hard and complicated subject, one she deftly surrounds with her signature wit and humor. With a sure hand, one that leads us inexorably toward the truth, McMan creates characters we grow to love—and others we don’t want to take our eyes off of for fear of what they will do next.” —ELLEN HART, Mystery Writers of America Edgar Grand Master Award Winner
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