I wanted to let mystery people know that, FINALLY, after having my editors
in both my houses abandon ship, and finding that most NY houses wanted me to
start a new series, since they didn’t own the rights to the first four Ben
Reese books (the third of them was an Edgar Finalist), the fifth Ben Reese,
Watches Of The Night, can be ordered and shipped NOW from any bookstore, and
on-line, though it officially comes out in June.

Ben Reese, a university archivist and ex-WWII Scout, has to use his combat
experience again after his old friend Kate Lindsay receives a disturbing
package. Her husband’s eyeball, retrieved from the frontline in WWII and
posted then - arrives twenty years later. Who would pull out a dead man’s
eye - then seal it up and mail it to his wife? Kate intends to ask Ross
MacNab, one of her husband’s commandos, who’s still in a mental hospital and
won’t speak of the war. Someone from the shadows of his past wants him
silenced forever. And hunting that traitor takes Ben and Kate from America
and Scotland across the Tuscan countryside to make the killing stop.

This is the first Ben Reese to show flashbacks of Ben in WWII, in addition
to the main story in the early 60s, when he’s in his late 30s. We see the
fiancé he married and mourns in the first four books, the firefight in which
he was wounded, the beginning of his recovery - as well as his first really
sizable steps toward retaking life after his wife’s early death.

There’s a horse sub-plot that’s based on what I went through with my own
horse that pet lovers will sympathize with. And for those who don’t know,
Ben is based on a real life archivist/scout I still work with who’s almost
85, and still sharp as the proverbial tack.

A sixth book, a prequel to the series, that deals with the Venona Code, will
come out this fall.

Thanks for letting me talk about all that. Can you hear the sigh of relief?

Sally Wright
www.sallywright.net