The CEO Came DOA
(The Alvarez Family Murder Mysteries)
Cozy Mystery
5th in Series
The Wives of Bath Press (September 1, 2016)

Synopsis

Lee Alvarez takes a job ferreting out the saboteur of a start-up company’s Initial Public Offering in the heart of Silicon Valley. Little does she know early one morning she will find the CEO hanging by the neck in the boardroom wearing nothing but his baby blue boxers. Was it suicide? Or was it one of the many people who loathed the man on sight, including his famous rock singer ex? Enter the world’s scariest drug, Devil’s Breath, and the bodies start piling up all the while she’s planning her very own Christmas wedding. Ho, ho, ho.

Guest Post

Today we welcome Lee Alvarez from the Alvarez Family.  She is going to share some thoughts about her mom with us…I’m sure many of us can relate!

On my mother, The-Never-Had-A-Bad-Hair-Day, Lila Hamilton Alvarez
By Lee Alvarez
(Protagonist of the Alvarez Family Murder Mystery Series)

My mother makes me crazy. I say this because she is perfect. Really, truly. I once heard a joke that went like this:

Two men are drinking at a bar. One man says to the other, “What brings you here every night? For me, it’s my wife. She can’t do anything right. I can’t stand being around her.”
The second man shakes his head and replies, “It’s not my wife’s faults that are killing me. It’s her virtues.”
The first man says, “Wow! You have my sympathy. That’s even worse.”

I can relate to the second man’s take on this like nobody’s business. All my life I have lived in the shadow of the most beautiful, in-control, stylish, intelligent, and knowledgeable woman on this planet, my mother.

Since I was a little kid, my girlfriends used to tell me how lucky I was to have such a ‘with it and gorgeous’ mom. When I got a little older, all my boyfriends developed huge crushes on her. I think most of them hung out with me, just to get to her.

When Dad was alive, he used to say Mom was the only woman he ever knew who would gut a fish in a beaded Halston gown. Mom would respond, arching one of her famous eyebrows, that she didn’t see anything wrong with it, because she always wore an apron. Then they’d both laugh and laugh. It was a running joke between them. These two were seriously in love. They were a 21st century Romeo and Juliet, he the Mexican immigrant-made-good, and she the Palo Alto blueblood.

I’m told I take after my father in nearly every way. Dark hair, twilight colored eyes, fiery temper. When I was a kid, everybody would say, “Lee’s got her daddy’s features and her mother’s fixtures.”

Not that anyone ever said this around Mom. First of all, way too crude. Gender-based innuendos are not made around L. H. Alvarez. She would be scandalized. And secondly, my mother can’t tolerate people who use nicknames, like “Lee.” She thinks it’s lazy. She’s called me only Liana, since I dropped out of the womb. Whoops. Scratch that remark. Back to being crude.

And what really makes her crazy – ha ha – is how at the tender age of eleven, I became enamored of Dashiell Hammett, the quintessential writer of hard-boiled detective stories. Dad had given me a set of the famous writer’s books for my birthday, and it changed my life. I never looked back. Becoming a sleuth was the next logical step.

You could say right here in modern day Silicon Valley, I cut my teeth on Sam Spade. That’s who I emulate. Of course, I emulate him while wearing my Jimmy Choo shoes, Vera Wang dress, and sipping on a high octane Vesper cocktail.

Well, after all, I am my mother’s daughter.

About the Author

After studying drama at the University of Miami in Florida, Heather went to Manhattan to pursue a career. There she wrote short stories, comedy acts, television treatments, ad copy, commercials, and two one-act plays, which were produced, among other places, at the famed Playwrights Horizon. Once, she even ghostwrote a book on how to run an employment agency. She was unemployed at the time.

Her first novel started the Silicon Valley based Alvarez Family Murder Mystery Series.  Murder is a Family Business, Book One, won the Single Titles Reviewers’ Choice Award 2011, followed by the second, A Wedding to Die For, 2012 Global and EPIC finalist for Best eBook Mystery of the Year. Death Runs in the Family won the coveted Global Gold for Best Mystery Novel, 2013. DEAD….If Only won the Global Silver for Best Mystery Novel, 2015. Her fifth novel of the series, The CEO Came DOA, debuts September, 2016. She loves writing this series mainly because she gets to play all of the characters, including the cat!

Heather’s other series, The Persephone Cole Vintage Mystery Series, is set in Manhattan circa 1942, during our country’s entrance into WWII. The Dagger Before Me, Book One, was voted best historical and mystery novel by Amazon readers in October, 2013.  It was followed by Iced Diamonds. Book Three, The Chocolate Kiss-Off, is a 2016 Lefty Award Finalist Best Historical Mystery.

On a personal note, her proudest award is the Silver IPPY (Independent Publisher Book Awards) Best Mystery/thriller 2014 for Death of a Clown. The stand-alone noir mystery is steeped in Heather’s family history. Daughter of real-life Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus folk, her mother was a trapeze artist/performer and father, an elephant trainer. Heather likes to say she brings the daily existence of the Big Top to life during World War II, embellished by her own murderous imagination.

Heather gives lectures, speaks at book clubs, and moderates author panels in the Bay Area, as well as teaching the art of writing. She believes everyone should write something, be it a poem, short story or letter. Then go out and plant a tree. The world will be a better place for it.

Website * Amazon * Facebook * Twitter

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Check out the other blogs on this tour

September 1 – 3 Partners in Shopping, Nana, Mommy, &, Sissy, Too! – SPOTLIGHT

September 2 – Community Bookstop – REVIEW

September 3 – Brooke Blogs – GUEST POST

September 4 – Island Confidential – CHARACTER INTERVIEW

September 5 – Back Porchervations – REVIEW

September 6 – deal sharing aunt – REVIEW, INTERVIEW

September 7 – A Blue Million Books – GUEST POST

September 8 – Christa Reads and Writes – GUEST POST

September 9 – Bookjunkie’s Book Blog – REVIEW

September 10 – Escape With Dollycas Into A Good Book – SPOTLIGHT

September 11 – Author Annette Drake’s blog – INTERVIEW

September 12 – LibriAmoriMiei – REVIEW

September 13 – Cozy Up With Kathy – INTERVIEW

September 14 – StoreyBook Reviews – CHARACTER GUEST POST