After her first attempt at breaking and entering, business attorney Hannah Dain heads for the cliffs of Pinnacle Peak, Arizona to rock climband winds up in the middle of an anti-Indian protest turned violent. She escapes, but makes an enemy. To make things worse, a shocking family revelation sends her on a hunt for someone who has been gone for almost thirty years. Then Hannah meets Tony Soto. Hannah is beguiled by the Native American/Latino who is passionately committed to the betterment of his tribe. Is Tony an innocent victim, or is he part of an elaborate financial hoax where more than money is at stake? Can Hannah unravel the scheme and find the key to the mystery of her past? This is the action-packed sequel to Family Claims.
A Stanford graduate and former plaintiff's trial lawyer (her specialty was suing middle-aged white guys who stole other people's money), Twist Phelan writes critically-acclaimed and award-winning short stories and the legal-themed Pinnacle Peak mystery series (Poisoned Pen Press).
A different sport sets the theme in each of Twist's Pinnacle Peak, Arizona legal-themed mysteries. HEIR APPARENT highlights team roping, while road and mountain biking is the lawyer protagonist's sports passion in FAMILY CLAIMS (Best Mystery, Colorado Gold Writers Contest; Calavera Award Finalist). In the third book in the series, SPURRED AMBITION (a Book Sense Notable Pick), rock climbing is the athletic focus, while FALSE FORTUNE features kayak paddling. Twist tries her hand at each sport; you can read about her adventures (http://www.twistphelan.com/2010/02/essays.html) or read the first chapter of each book (http://www.twistphelan.com/2010/02/books.html).
When writing her novels, often other voices would pop up in Twist's imagination, individuals who didn't have a place in the series but whose stories interested her. So when the editor of WALL STREET NOIR asked her to write a story, she jumped at the chance to tell the tale of a commodity futures trader's dizzy ride on Fortune's roller coaster. "A Trader's Lot" was among the stories highlighted in the Publishers Weekly starred review. Since then she's written stories for other anthologies and mystery magazines. All of the stories are collected in one volume, A STAB IN THE HEART Collected Crime & Mystery Stories 2005-2009, available for Kindle. The title story, "A Stab in the Heart," won the Thriller Award for Best Short Story of the Year. "Time Will Tell" was a finalist for the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Short Story of the Year (Crime Writers of Canada) and was selected for BY HOOK OR BY CROOK AND 29 MORE OF THE BEST CRIME & MYSTERY STORIES OF THE YEAR.
Drawing on her experience in commodity futures trading, Twist's work-in-progress is a suspense novel set in the financial world. When asked for investment advice, she recommends, "Go to Las Vegas. You'll lose the same amount of money, and the drinks are free."
Twist takes pride in the fact that Playboy Magazine helped launch her writing career: "While I was in Finland at a month-long ski-training camp, someone stole the bag of books I had brought to read. The only English-language material available was a stack of well-thumbed Playboy magazines. I read them all--the articles really are good--then decided if there weren't any books to read, I'd write one. So I skied during the days (which were only a few hours long at that latitude) and wrote when it was dark. Four weeks later I had a draft of HEIR APPARENT, the first Pinnacle Peak mystery."
For more information on Twist and her writing, visit www.twistphelan.com.
