The nun was dead. Her body lay on the lawn outside Gracie Mansion, the home of New York City’s mayor, and it wasn’t alone. There were four of them altogether. They’d been killed at different times, in different places, and dumped there. There should have been five – but the boy was missing. Jonah Quill, blind since birth, sat in a car driven by a killer and wondered where they were going. Though he was blind, Jonah saw more than most people did. It was his secret, and he was counting on that to save his life. Detective Kathy Mallory was counting on herself to save his life. It took her a while to realize that the missing-person case she was pursuing was so intimately connected to the massacre on the mayor’s lawn. But there was something about the boy she was searching for that reminded her of herself, all those years ago, when she was an orphan adrift in a world over which she had little control and determined never to let that happen again. She would find him – she just hoped it’d be in time.

New York Times best-selling author Carol O’Connell has won a wide fan base with her popular novels starring NYPD detective Kathy Mallory. in The Chalk Girl, a little girl is abandoned in Central Park-her uncle’s body in a tree not far away. Recognizing a kindred spirit in the girl, Mallory takes the case. But her investigation soon leads to a trail of murder and blackmail spanning 15 years. “. a rich, character-driven series .”-Library Journal

Police detective Kathleen Mallory recognized the dead call girl. It was someone from her past, a woman who protected her on the streets of New York-and who betrayed her. Mallory also recognized the crime scene: victim hanging, hair in mouth, fire burning. It happened twenty-one years ago, when Mallory was a child. Now-whether it’s the work of a copycat killer or a serial murderer-it has happened again.
Kathleen Mallory’s past has finally caught up with her.

The reviews called it “A Play to Die For” after the woman was found dead in the front row. It didn’t seem so funny the next night, when another body was found – this time the playwright’s, his throat slashed. Detective Kathy Mallory takes over, but no matter what she asks, no one seems to be giving her a straight answer. The only person – if “person” is the right word – who seems to be clear is the ghostwriter. Every night, an unseen backstage hand chalks up line changes and messages on a blackboard. And the ghostwriter is now writing Mallory into the play itself, a play about a long-ago massacre that may not be at all fictional. “MALLORY,” the blackboard reads. “TONIGHT’S THE NIGHT. NOTHING PERSONAL.” If Mallory can’t find out who’s responsible, heads will roll. Unfortunately, one of them may be her own.