Created by Linda Ladd
CLAIRE MORGAN gets around. When she first popped up in Head to Head (2006), written by former romance writer Linda Ladd, she was a former LAPD detective, working homicides in Canton County, Missouri, the so-called “Lake Tahoe of the Ozarks.”
She hit the ground running with that one, investigating the bizarre murder of a soap opera star, who’s found at the bottom of the lake, naked, taped to a chair and posed at a fully set dinner table, last seen at a swanky “wellness” resort. And the number one suspect is the owner, the hunky, charismatic celebrity psychiatrist Dr. Nicholas Black, the super shrink to the stars, whose romantic advances towards Claire “may hide a dangerous agenda.”
But they don’t — turns out that the Good Doctor is “the man of her dreams,” and they soon begin a steamy relationship that so far has lasted throughout the series. Hell, they even get married at one point.
Naturally, Claire has a tragic past (always convenient for some emotional huffery and puffery when the plot lags), and despite some occasionally woozy logic, she’s a smart, tough and determinded detective, with a suitably jaded outlook on life and love, and “pretty much up for anything” — although that has more than once landed her in trouble.
And studly Doctor Nick (who has a secret past of his own) is always there to help, of course, not just to attend to matters of the heart, but to lend a hand with a veritable, Patteronesque plethora of sadistic sickos and psychos (many courtesy of Doctor Nick’s psychiatric practice), cheesy serial killer plots and enough twists and turns and dekes and dives to keep them both hopping all over the country.
Like I said, Claire gets around. After seven books as a cop in “The Claire Morgan Homicide Thrillers” series, while recuperating from a brutal beating, she decided to cut loose from the police department (except in an advisory capacity every now and then) and start her own detective agency, INTEL, and in the process kicks off a whole new series of books, “The Claire Morgan Investigations,“ starting with Devil Dead (2015).
And just in case she misses anything, Claire also shows up in another of Ladd’s series, which features New Orleans private eye Will Novak who runs INTEL’s New Orleans office. She employs a few other ops as well, most notably John Booker and a former pro football player, 6’9″ Jack Holliday.
UNDER OATH
- “One of the most creepy, crawly and compelling psychological thrillers ever.”
— Fresh Fiction on Dark Places
NOVELS
- THE CLAIRE MORGAN HOMICIDE THRILLERS
- Head to Head (2006) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
- Dark Places (2007) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
- Die Smiling (2008) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
- Enter Evil (2009) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
- Remember Murder (2013) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
- Mostly Murder (2013) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
- Bad Bones (2014) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
- THE CLAIRE MORGAN INVESTIGATIONS
- Devil Dead (2015) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
- Gone Black (2016) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
- Fatal Game (2017) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
