Susan Brassfield Cogan

Go to Hell. It's such a delicious phrase. Angie Tanaka never thought she'd want to go there herself. Usually people spend their entire lives avoiding a trip to Hell. Not Angie. Long-ju is down there and it was all her fault. He is the Silver Dragon, magnificent, legendary, a work of art. He had sacrificed himself for her and she is only ... Angie. She needed to put that right. She had to get him out of there. Nobody was going to help her with that, certainly not the other dragons. All of that led to one question: How do you spring a dragon out of Hell?

Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons for you are crunchy and good with ketchup...(source unknown)In the South China Sea is an island protected by nine dragons. Angie Tanaka has made one of them really, really angry. Angie says: Thievery isn't actually my vocation. It's really more of a pursuit. It's only my day job. I'm really an actress ... just kidding

Lady Margaret's quest to bring a killer to justice leads her out of her art studio to a seedy all-night cafe, a Depression-era tenement, the waterfront, and eventually to the dark underbelly of Chinatown. Inspector Monahan, the blunt-talking son of Irish immigrants has no love for the English nobility. He takes a dim view of interfering amateur sleuths and doesn't like being strong-armed, even by a gorgeous dame. Together they pursue the Mandarin, a shadowy Chinese gangster who may have the answers to blackmail, smuggling, and the whereabouts of a heartless killer. Cherie Jung reviewing for Over My Dead Body: "It's been quite some time since I read a book I was willing to skip lunch to continue reading, but I read straight through from page one to the end without stopping. Everything clicks. A good story, fascinating characters, and snappy dialogue.

This novel finished in the top 100 of the 2008 Amazon Breakout Novel Contest and won 1st place in the 2010 OWFI Conference Mystery DivisionIt is 1935 and Joe Bennett is a straight-arrow town sheriff who must investigate the death of a man everyone is happy to be rid of. A wandering minstrel (who in 1935 was called a hobo) has a magical ruby ring and an even more magical harmonica. This story also has lying friends, secretive townspeople, a woman of negotiable virtue and her criminal boyfriend, a beautiful angel in a cold white box and a dead man who really, really deserved it.