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December 2021 Book of the Month
THE VIOLET DARGER FBI MYSTERY SERIES
BY L.T. VARGUS and TIM MCBAIN
About L.T. Vargus
L.T. Vargus grew up in Hell, Michigan, which is a lot smaller, quieter, and less fiery than one might imagine. When not click-clacking away at the keyboard, she can be found sewing, fantasizing about food, and rotting her brain in front of the TV.
L.T. Vargus now lives in New Mexico with her special man friend/writing partner, Tim McBain.
She likes YouTube videos of cute animals, mystery novels, punk rock, and pizza.
About Tim McBain
- VARGUS AMAZON AUTHOR PAGE
- MCBAIN AMAZON AUTHOR PAGE
- INTERVIEW BY EMPTY SINK PUBLISHING
- INTERVIEW BY WRYTERSVIEW
- AUTHOR WEBSITE
- GET THE VIOLET DARGER FBI MYSTERY SERIES ON AMAZON
The FBI Special Agent Violet Darger Series
* DEAD END GIRL
Her body is broken. Wrapped in plastic. Dumped on the side of the road. She is the first. There will be more.
The most recent body was discovered in the grease dumpster behind a Burger King. Dismembered. Shoved into two garbage bags and lowered into the murky oil.
Now rookie agent Violet Darger gets the most important assignment of her career. She travels to the Midwest to face a killer unlike anything she’s seen. Aggressive. Territorial. Deranged and driven.
* IMAGE IN A CRACKED MIRROR
A family has been massacred in their home, a display of violence both brutal and bizarre.
The details prove curious — not only are the bodies savaged way beyond anything found at a normal murder scene, every mirror in the house has been shattered. The spectacle shocks a peaceful island community, and when local police turn to the FBI for assistance, Agent Violet Darger finds herself working another harrowing crime scene. She stares, once more, into the abyss, and mankind’s warped reflection stares back.
* KILLING SEASON
Two days. Fourteen dead. The next victim could be you.
The first bullet punches through the windshield of an SUV. A head shot. The driver’s death is instantaneous. And it’s only the beginning.
A sniper along I-20 kills eight and causes a 36 car pileup. Brutal. Efficient.
The next morning, the same individual stalks through a grocery store parking lot with a handgun. He takes out six innocent shoppers along with the store’s front window before fleeing without a trace.
By the time Special Agent Violet Darger arrives in Atlanta, the city teeters toward panic. The vacant streets and restaurants paint an eerie picture. No one dares to venture out.
* THE LAST VICTIM
An escaped killer. A troubled investigator. Secrets that haunt the past and present.
New crimes lead FBI profiler Victor Loshak to revisit former scenes and witnesses in the Las Vegas area. The evidence suggests the return of a notorious and brutal serial killer from years ago — the one who got away.
Loshak conceals his work from his partner, Violet Darger, and tries desperately to stay one step ahead of both her and the murderer.
Leonard Stump is back. Maybe. And things are about to get so much worse.
* THE GIRL IN THE SAND
Shallow graves scar the desert landscape. A cemetery in the sand. Some of the lost are never found.
Thousands of girls go missing every year in Las Vegas. Abducted. Or worse.
And now the dead are calling.
These lost girls summon FBI Profiler Violet Darger to Sin City — a new case. There are fresh dead to sort through — two bodies burned beyond recognition in the trunk of a sedan — and there’s reason to believe that there are missing girls waiting to be saved.
* BAD BLOOD
The body slumps over the steering wheel. Pools of blood going tacky on the dash. Two shots to the back of the head.
A mafia-style hit in a small town.
Special Agent Violet Darger must make sense of this savagery. Figure out how brutality like this could happen in rural Michigan.
The victim had been living the American dream. A small-business owner who built a construction empire. Started a family. Coached youth hockey. He seemed to have it all.
But his surface life didn’t tell the full story.
* FIVE DAYS POST MORTEM
Her body floats. A bloated thing half atop the river. Naked. Pale. Mouth and eyes open wide.
When two fishermen discover a corpse floating in the Clackamas river, profiler Violet Darger heads to rural Oregon to hunt another serial killer. What she discovers in the woods might change the course of her life.
What secrets does the water conceal?
* INTO THE ABYSS
“Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster. For when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche
= = =
Will Violet Darger agree to a face to face meeting with the man who shot her?
Still awaiting trial, infamous serial killer Leonard Stump has hinted at the locations of additional bodies — more desert graves waiting to be uncovered. He wants to talk, but he has one condition. Violet Darger must be present at the interview.
Now the pressure is on. Should Darger head to Vegas and sit down with Stump? Everyone else seems to think so.
It’s a chance to close some cases and give families closure, they say. A chance to learn something crucial about the criminal mind, they say. A chance to do something good.
So why does Darger feel like it’s all going to go terribly wrong?
* NIGHT ON FIRE
Fire crawls up the sides of the church. The orange glow thrashes. Blackens the siding. Climbs up onto the steeple. The flames close in on the wedding party trapped inside.
When a serial arsonist terrorizes Los Angeles County, FBI profiler Violet Darger heads to California to investigate. The fires keep coming faster. The body count rises, and the threat hangs over the city as thick as the smog.
The case file is brutal — stuffed with photographs of charred bodies, human faces melted beyond recognition. And when Darger gets up close to the crimes, the real thing, that sense of savagery only intensifies.
What kind of a person could carry out such cruelties? Understanding the warped psychology will be the key to solving the case.
* DARK PASSAGE
The corpse juts from the heaping bulge of the landfill. Milky white flesh laid bare by the front loader’s blade. Naked. Female. Face down in the garbage.
When three bodies turn up in a landfill outside of Philadelphia, FBI profiler Violet Darger heads to Pennsylvania to investigate. Right away there’s a major complication. The emaciated corpses appear to have been starved to death.
Darger arrives in time for the autopsies. Watches withered bodies laid out on the stainless steel slabs of the morgue, their faces crusted with sandy soil, skin pulled taut around knobby cheekbones.
What kind of a person could carry out such harsh acts? Figuring out the warped psychology might be the key to solving the case.
* TROUBLE IN PARADISE
A missing girl in Caribbean paradise. And an old flame to complicate the trip.
When 17-year-old Micaela Tolliver goes missing during her beach vacation, FBI profiler Violet Darger heads to Curacao to investigate. The case vexes local law enforcement, with plenty of suspicious characters around and comparisons to Natalee Holloway aplenty.
Red herrings. False starts. People who will go great lengths to protect the island’s long held secrets.
Further complications emerge due to someone else entangled in the case — Darger’s old friend and former lover, private investigator Owen Baxter. They’re working together for the first time after a bad breakup. The tension is palpable, and Darger begins to question the knot of conflicts in her own heart.
Corruption. Death. Sand. Romance.
* COUNTDOWN TO MIDNIGHT
By the time you read this, I’ll be dead, but what I’ve set into motion will only be beginning.
The first blast takes out an actor from a string of famous coffee commercials. A plain cardboard box in the mail blows when he opens it. Pumps hot nails through his face.
So begins the series of mail bombs that beckons FBI profiler Violet Darger to New York.
The bomber’s plan is meticulous — an ever growing spectacle of gruesome violence meant to spread his cryptic message piece by piece. And the clock is ticking.
Starting at midnight tonight, a bomb will go off roughly every eight hours, and a target will be neutralized.
LOOK! THERE’S MORE . . .
The Victor Loshak Series
The Charlotte Winters Series
The The Scattered and the Dead Series
- THE SCATTERED AND THE DEAD BOOK 0.5
- THE SCATTERED AND THE DEAD BOOK 1
- THE SCATTERED AND THE DEAD BOOK 1.5
- THE SCATTERED AND THE DEAD BOOK 2
- THE SCATTERED AND THE DEAD BOOK 2.5
- THE SCATTERED AND THE DEAD BOOK 2.6
- THE SCATTERED AND THE DEAD BOOK 3
The Awake in the Dark Series
Stand Alone Novels
Next: AGENT TESS WINNETT THRILLERS — by Leslie Wolfe
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