D.M. Pirrone is the nom de plume of Diane Piron-Gelman, who works as a freelance editor and audiobook narrator when she isn't writing books. Her latest novel is PROMISES TO THE DEAD (Allium Press, August 2020), Book 3 in the Hanley & Rivka mystery series.
As Chicago recovers from the Great Fire of 1871, the Civil War still haunts its residents. What begins for Detective Frank Hanley as the simple case of a missing railroad clerk quickly escalates into something much more complex. Ezra Hayes, who has made a daring escape from forced servitude on a Louisiana sugar plantation, brings to Chicago proof of nefarious doings in the South that implicates the missing clerk’s employer, a major shipper of sugar. As Hanley untangles the railroad’s role in the clerk’s disappearance, Rivka Kelmansky faces a personal struggle. Her brother is pressuring her to marry a young man from her tight-knit Jewish community, but she dreams of forging a new life with Hanley. When her mulatto sister-in-law is wrongfully accused of murder, Rivka turns to Hanley for help. With Ada's life in the balance, Hanley and Rivka fight opposition on multiple fronts to uncover the shocking truth.
Book 2 in the series, FOR YOU WERE STRANGERS (Allium Press, December 2015), begins when a former Civil War soldier is found slain in his bed with his own bayonet. The murder exposes secrets best left buried--among them a black man passing for white, an 1864 conspiracy to take over Chicago that still threatens powerful men, and a surviving Confederate guerrilla fighter unable to deal with a world turned upside down, with tragic consequences. Hanley and Rivka race against time to solve the killing, before the turbulent events of the recent past claim more victims.
Book 1, SHALL WE NOT REVENGE (Allium Press, 2014), takes place during the harsh winter of early 1872, when rookie Irish detective Francis (Frank) Hanley solves the brutal murder of a rabbi with an unexpected assist from the dead man's daughter, Rivka, but finds a much darker case than he bargained for that ultimately forces a reckoning with an enemy from his own checkered past.
Pirrone's debut mystery novel, NO LESS IN BLOOD, was published by Five Star/Cengage in 2011. A Chicago native, history buff and avid reader of just about anything, Ms. Piron-Gelman is a longtime member of Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime. She lives in Oak Park with her husband Stephen, her still-at-home son Isaac, and two African Sideneck turtles (Yertle and Lawrence).
