A Small Piece of Flesh

A Small Piece of Flesh, released around April 5th 2012, is about crime and a long love affair, abruptly ended by a fatal heart attack. Stephen Cole is the founder of Kids in Crisis, a New York charity he set up to help young people with problems that they have no control over. He is also an industrialist with a conscience who sees no reason why making money and having a strong sense of ethics can't co-exist.

A long time ago he met and later married Samantha Chapman, a cool blonde with a strong resemblance to Grace Kelly, who shared his enthusiasms and supported the charity whole-heartedly. Together, their profile in New York society is at the very top.

But now Samantha is a widow and suddenly she's news. Where did she come from? What's her background? It didn't seem so important while Stephen was alive but now everyone wants a piece of her.

But Samantha doesn't want to play. 

Do Serial Killers like Cookies?

We assume serial killers are heartless beasts whose all-consuming passion is their next victim, but surely they have to eat. I was thinking about this while my wife was creating a batch of cookies based on a Celtic football team's logo and an iced football. I wondered what a serial killer would like on his cookies and how he would ask the baker to decorate them. I imagined a knife or a gun, possibly red blood dripping off the edge. Maybe a nice flower or the outline of a kitten. But why leave a clue with a total stranger who might remember the unusual request when the cops came around asking questions?

The little details are what the NYPD look for when faced with a series of dead people connected by witness, weapons or forensics.

Sometimes there's nothing. No ideas, no motive, no suspects. That's when luck or intuition kicks in.