Sophie Katz

Thriller scribe Sophie Katz is as hard-boiled as a woman who drinks Grande Caramel Brownie Frappuccionos can be; maybe it's from a lifetime of fielding dumb comments about her half-black, half-Jewish ethnicity. ("My sister's married to a Polynesian! I just love your culture!") So Sophie knows it's not paranoia, or post-divorce, living-alone-again jitters, when she becomes convinced that a crazed reader is sneaking into her apartment to reenact scenes from her books. The police, however, can't tell a good plot from an unmarked grave.

When a filmmaker friend is brutally murdered in the manner of a death scene in one of his movies, Sophie becomes convinced that a copycat killer is on the loose...and that she's the next target. If she doesn't solve the mystery, her own best seller will spell out her doom. Cursing her grisly ending (why, oh, why did she have to pick the axe?), Sophie engages in some real-life gumshoe tactics.

The man who swoops in to save her in dark alleys at night is mysterious new love interest Anatoly Darinsky. Of course, if this were fiction, Anatoly would be her prime suspect.