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Inspired by Truth, Driven by Suspense: The Award-Winning Mystery Shady Justice
Have you ever met a hitman in real life?
Today’s guest author has, and that’s only the beginning of her story.
I’m thrilled to welcome Rena Koontz to the blog! Known for weaving real-life events into high-stakes fiction, she brings a unique depth to the genre. Her latest release, Shady Justice, took second place in the Daphne du Maurier Awards and kicks off her first trilogy. It follows a crime from the streets all the way to the courtroom, through the eyes of a determined crime reporter who refuses to let the truth get buried.
In today’s post, she shares the real-world moments that shaped Shady Justice, touches on a few of her other novels inspired by true events, and lets readers know that Book 2, Chasing Justice, is coming this fall.
And if you’re curious to see how it all begins, don’t miss Chapter One of Shady Justice at the end of this post.
Take it away, Rena.
Hi Michelle!
I’m coming off a “high” after winning a second-place Daphne Du Maurier Award this month for excellence in mystery and suspense writing for my most recent novel, Shady Justice. The Kiss of Death chapter of Romance Writers of America sponsored the award competition.
I am a newspaper-reporter-turned-author of romantic suspense novels. Well, sometimes it’s more suspense and less romance. I like to tell people I take you from the crime scene to the courtroom and throw in a little love along the way.
Shady Justice is based on an actual murder that, as the cops and crime reporter for the local newspaper, I reported. It was a murder within a murder, actually, and it rocked the community when a prominent businessman and politician were arrested for the bludgeoning death of the businessman’s wife. I was there to see the city councilman handcuffed and led away, as pompous as ever.
Imagine! I knew a murderer. I’d quoted this man on budget decisions, city business and general daily news. No need to insert “alleged” in that sentence as both men are spending the rest of their lives in prison.
Their scheme was to hire someone to kill the wife. They befriended a man who struggled with addiction, unemployment, and life in general. He failed the task, and they killed him and buried him in at a construction site.
Onto a more professional hitman. I’ll call him “X.” As a side note, he shows up in the sequel to Shady Justice, titled Chasing Justice, available by the end of summer.
Have you ever met a hitman? I have. I introduced my old-fashioned Italian father to him while we stood in the Courthouse hallway during a break in the murder trials (each man had his own trial). The hitman—again no alleged necessary because he was a self-proclaimed mercenary who also went to prison—was polite to me, respectful, and complimented me on my accurate reporting every day. He was polite to my Dad, too.
I was standing with two county detectives and X when my Dad came down the hall. He’d been in the building for other business and hoped to stick his head in the trial. Instead, he caught us on a break. He thought he was meeting three detectives. After all, X was dressed in a suit and tie, was clean cut and kind of attractive.
Later that night, when I explained who X was and that he was cooperating with the police, Daddy about had a heart attack.
I think I always knew the story would turn into a book someday. I saved all my notes.
All of my books are based on my experiences as a crime reporter. Love’s Secret Fire is about an arsonist loose in the city. My editors learned that the firefighters were going out after midnight, patrolling the alleys trying to catch him, and they assigned me to do a ride-along. That was intense.
There’s one about a serial killer, Broken Justice, Blind Love; one about a witness to a mob killing who’s on the run, The Devil She Knew; a bank robbery, Off The Grid For Love (re-releasing in August); and Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, Loving Gia to Death. The book about burglary is semi-autobiographical. In Thief of the Heart, I was the one burgled. Writing about it was therapeutic.
Shady Justice features three key characters, Rylee Lapiz, Parker Bentley, and Steel Chaney. Technically four if you include Nick Cooper, the hot cop. But he’s not getting his own book.
Shady Justice stars Rylee Lapiz, a tenacious TV reporter. (Sound familiar?)
Chasing Justice features Detective Parker Bentley.
And Justice Served will be Steel Chaney’s story. This will be my first trilogy. I hope you read all three.
Thanks, Michelle, for letting me pop into your readers’ mailboxes.
An excerpt from Shady Justice follows. And more information about me.
Thank you to Rena for sharing the real-life moments that inspired Shady Justice and for giving us a front-row seat to the suspense.
If you enjoyed this behind-the-scenes look, be sure to check out Chapter One below to see how it all begins.
About Rena Koontz
Rena Koontz is a romantic suspense author passionate about the stories she tells and the messages they deliver. She is a retired journalist. Her writing career has taken her into the sports arena, politics, feature writing, editorial writing, and, her favorite, cops and courts. She has chased fire trucks and police cars, covered all sorts of crimes, including murders, and reported criminal, civil, high profile and ordinary trials. Many of the ideas for her books come from real cases she is familiar with.
Plus, being married to a retired FBI agent provides a source for invaluable technical advice, among other things!
Read Rena’s full bio and find all her books on her website. Don’t forget to sign up for her newsletter and get updates and freebies.
Author Links
Website: www.renakoontz.com
Facebook: facebook.com/RenaKoontz
Goodreads: Rena Koontz
Purchase Links:
Chapter One
The woman was so badly beaten, Steel Chaney vomited his breakfast bagel in the grass at the side of the concrete driveway. So much for bragging that after twenty years on the job, he’d seen it all.
Christ, there was nothing left of her face to identify. Her mouth was a bloody hollow where teeth should be. The tips of all ten fingers were scorched black. Were they burned before or after she died? For her sake, he hoped it was postmortem. Someone sure as hell didn’t want her identified.
Chaney spit the last of the sour taste away, wiped his mouth on his coat sleeve, and turned back to the car. The poor woman was stuffed inside the trunk on her back, her legs pinned beneath her. They had to be broken. Blood soaked her clothes, seeping to the area rug underneath her body, turning it pitch black. Her killer had wrapped her in this piece of carpet to transport her from the murder site. Blood matted in her dirty blond hair where her skull was crushed. Caked strands knotted around gold circle earrings. Her eyes were swollen shut, a palette of eggplant purple and midnight blue. A bloodied gold chain fell toward the back of her neck. Robbery was not a motive for this act of violence.
He narrowed his focus to the interior of the trunk. Empty except for three forty-pound bags of cat litter shoved to the rear. What the fuck?
“Steel?”
He turned toward Parker Bentley, the rookie detective he mentored. As rookies go, she was smarter than most and still hungry to learn. He’d balked at taking on a trainee, assuming his seniority exempted him from babysitting. It hadn’t. His argument, that a three-month mentoring period was ridiculous given the years and experience most cops already had by the time they expressed interest in the detective bureau, fell on deaf ears, all because two years ago the mayor got his tit in the wringer over some detective new to the job who went rogue and then claimed lack of training. So now, they had training.
He’d checked out Parker Bentley, looking for any excuse to dump a woman hoping to do a man’s job. She’d been a terror practically from her first day as a boot, coming up through the ranks in uniform with honors and accolades and an impressive arrest record. Those threatened by her, women and men alike, referred to her as Bitch Bentley. After knowing her a while, he was certain it was said behind her back. He was even more confident she didn’t give a damn.
Bentley shook his hand the first day they met. “I’m not interested in fetching your coffee or fucking you. You’re supposed to be the best. I already know the criminal code. What I want from you is every bit of knowledge you have regarding detective work that I can’t learn from a manual. I don’t give a shit about your love life, your prostate or your wet dreams. In return, I’ll make you proud to have mentored me.” So far, she had.
She held out a bottle of water. “You going soft on me?”
He smiled. “Maybe. Knew we had a body. Shouldn’t have eaten on the way.” His mouth welcomed the cool water. “Any idea who she is?”
“Not yet. No license plate. If this is her car, she’s a better woman than I.”
“What do you mean?”
“The car is clean inside. I mean immaculate. Not a tissue or an umbrella or a crumbled store receipt under the seat. The trunk where she ended up dead is spotless. Not even a snow scraper left in there from winter. No woman I know keeps a car this clean.”
He snickered. “You going sexist on me?”
“No, I’m being honest. A woman’s car is like her purse. Anything we might need is in there. If this is her vehicle, she wasn’t human.”
He loved her sense of humor, even in the face of murder.
He took another swig. “So, car owner unknown for now. What else?”
“Not much. Thank goodness it’s cool this morning. I don’t think decomposition is an issue.”
A polite way of saying the body was fresh. The temperature had dropped last night to the fifties. Fall was trying to overtake summer, but slowly here in the City of Pittsburgh. Today it would be eighty degrees again. They stepped closer to the trunk. No handbag visible unless it was under the body. He should be so lucky to find her wallet and ID. A blood-stained ten-dollar bill peeked out of her ripped blouse as if jammed between her breasts. “Maybe she was a hooker.”
Bentley rolled her eyes “An entire crime scene and you focus on her breasts. I have a caveman for a partner.”
He was, to some extent. Bentley was dragging him kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century where women were equals. He stood with one foot in the good old days, when he didn’t have to admit women like Bentley were superior to him. Didn’t mean he didn’t respect the hell out of her and women in general. He’d take a bullet for Bentley. Few people he’d say that about, including his two ex-wives.
“I saw the money. Always a motive for murder.” One side of Bentley’s mouth lifted in a smirk. She wasn’t buying it. “Who called it in?”
She pointed toward a young man leaning against his garage door wiping snot from his nose with his sleeve, barefoot, the front of his pants wet. Yeah, finding a dead woman in your driveway would make anyone piss their pants.
“That gentleman, and I use the term loosely.” Bentley consulted her mini iPad. He still preferred pencil and notebook, but she was all about electronics. “Says his name is Dickey Sharpei. Like the dog. Lives here with his parents and sister. Claims he doesn’t know the woman, doesn’t recognize the car, doesn’t know anything about anything. I didn’t have a chance to run his name yet to see if he has a record. This is a top-notch neighborhood and, if you ask me, he looks out of place.”
Chaney’s eyes darted up and down the asphalt street. This community was an upscale suburb just outside the city. Two-story houses with shiny, power-washed aluminum siding, colorful window boxes in full bloom at the end of summer, and manicured lawns. Perennials decorated the paths up to the front doors and varied door wreaths and welcome signs greeted a visitor. The weedy Sharpei landscaping around the single-family lot was less pristine than the neighbors, the siding on the house marred in spots and dirty all over, and not a blooming flower in sight. The entire property appeared slightly sullied compared to the other homes on the street. Likewise, Mr. Sharpei looked marginally below the decency bar in his tattered shorts, his uncut hair, and his dirty fingernails. Plus, he had the shakes. Nerves or did he need a hit of his drug of choice?
“You’ll find a criminal history for sure. His face is familiar.” The names didn’t always stick, but Chaney recognized him as one of the hundreds of druggies he’d arrested during his stint on the force. Drug possession and grand theft auto, he was certain. How much did the little snot have to do with this woman’s murder?
“Who was first on the scene?”
“Unit six-seven over there. Sergeant Wayne Cubb is writing up a report for us now.”
“Okay, tell me what you know as fact and what you think in theory.” This was how he mentored her, never showing or lecturing, always expecting her to apply her knowledge to sort through the minutia of a crime. She was intelligent, book smart and street wise, and often saw what he didn’t.
Bentley filled her lungs and used a stylus to scroll her screen. She printed in tiny block letters, unreadable for his aging eyeballs. He blamed it on the light reflecting off the iPad.
“Call came in at five forty-seven this morning. Dickey Sharpei over there reported an unknown car parked in his driveway. Claims he didn’t touch anything, just saw the car and called the police. Says he doesn’t recognize the vehicle. He didn’t pop the trunk, Sergeant Cubb did. The car was locked but Cubb found the key fob balanced on top of the left front tire.”
Sure, that’s where every bad guy leaves the key. Chaney nodded.
“Those are facts that I find odd. Normal curiosity would make me look inside the car first for a clue as to who it belonged to if I didn’t already know. Would I look in the trunk? Yeah, but maybe I’m unusually nebby.”
A dozen years in this city and he still didn’t understand Pittsburghese. “Unusually what? Your Pittsburgh accent is surfacing again.”
Bentley blushed. She looked good with color on her face. “Sorry. It means nosy.”
Chaney agreed. He’d be nebby too.
I hope you enjoyed meeting Rena. If you’re a true crime mystery reader, her books are sure to fill your TBR this fall.
📚 Looking for more mysteries, author insights, and reader freebies?
Take a look around the site! Alongside today’s gripping and gritty mystery, you’ll also find my lighthearted cozy mysteries. I have never met a hitman in real life!😄 Rena is one brave author. 😎
Plus, book recommendations, blog posts for writers and readers alike, and plenty of ways to connect with your next favorite read.
Happy reading!
As always, thanks for stopping by for some Salty Inspirations!
