BooksChatter: ☀ Fixed in Fear: Justice [5]

Thank you for joining us on the Virtual Book Tour for Fixed in Fear, a Thriller by T. E. Woods (8 December 2015, Alibi, 298 pages).

This is the fifth book in the Justice series.

PREVIEW: Check out the book's synopsis and excerpt below, as well as our Q&A with author T.E. Woods. Read the first four chapters with Amazon Look Inside.

Please do take part: comment on our post and follow the tour where you will be able to read other excerpts (☀), interviews (ℚ) and reviews (✍).

Synopsis | Teaser | The Series | Author Q&A | About the Author | Tour Stops

Synopsis

The Fixer returns in the pulse-pounding Justice series—perfect for fans of Lisa Gardner, Karin Slaughter, and Jeff Lindsay’s Dexter thrillers—as worlds collide in an inferno of bloodshed, revenge, and holy terror.

I’ll probably never see my daughter again. And if I do, she’ll either be dead or in a jail cell.

Seattle Chief of Detectives Mort Grant cannot reconcile the memories of his vibrant, headstrong young daughter with the cold, deadly woman she has become. The head of one of the largest criminal enterprises in the world, Allie Grant seized power by wrenching it away from her lover, a notorious Russian gangster. How she maintains her control, Mort doesn’t even want to imagine.

Only two other people know the truth about Allie: the vigilante known as The Fixer, and Mort’s best friend, Larry, who’s undergoing a crisis of his own. Someone close to Larry, his last real connection to his beloved late wife, has been slain in a mass murder at a sweat lodge deep in the woods of Washington State. When word gets out, Mort immediately takes on the gruesome case.

But as Mort hunts down a pair of methodical killers, The Fixer does some deep digging of her own. And what she unearths will rock Mort’s family forever. Because The Fixer has set her sights on Allie Grant—and nothing will ever be the same again.

Teaser: Excerpt

Chapter 1

     It was September and the air blew warm across the broad clearing high atop a pine-forested hill. Nevertheless, Dalton Rogers mentally hummed “Here Comes Santa Claus” as he stepped over the smoldering remains of five burned bodies.His grandfather had sung it to him every Christmas Eve when Dalton was a kid. The night before Christmas had always been his favorite time. Back then, his mother would make an effort to stay sober long enough to drive her young son to her parents’ house. She’d drop him off and promise to be there in the morning. A couple of years she even made it. But to Dalton it didn’t matter where his mother went on Christmas Eve. There was always plenty of food on Grandma’s old hickory kitchen table, as well as a giant tree done up with bubble lights and tinsel. His grandparents would let Dalton wrestle with their old hound dog right there in the living room. And when it was time for bed, Grandpa would tuck Dalton in, cover him with a quilt Grandma’s mother had stitched herself, and sing the silly song until Dalton fell asleep. It always brought him comfort.
     He hadn’t thought of that song in years. Not since his mother had had that last screaming match with her parents. After that, she packed up and moved herself and eleven-year-old Dalton two counties over. He didn’t see his grandparents again until their funeral. Flu took them both the year Dalton graduated from high school. But today the song came back to him. He hoped it might work its magic to keep the beef-and-bean burrito he had for lunch down in his stomach where it needed to stay. He didn’t need old Tug spreading stories about how the new guy blew chunks at the sight of all those dead bodies.
     “Rogers!”
     Dalton looked toward Officer Tugger Mahoney, a fifteen-year veteran of the Enumclaw Police Department, who stood talking with the shaking and crying woman who’d placed the emergency call.
     “You catching anything?”
     Dalton forced himself to monitor the carnage and yelled back the details as he circled the burned-out area. “Looks like five of ’em. All dead and then some.” Here comes Santa Claus, Here comes Santa Claus. “Best I can tell it’s two ladies….I mean, two females.” Right down Santa Claus Lane. “Clothes are pretty near burned off all of ’em.” He swallowed hard against a mixture of taco sauce and bile climbing up his throat. “Some’s got their fingers burned off.” He didn’t yell out any description of the slash wounds he saw on the bodies. There was no need to traumatize the woman any more than she obviously was.
     Dalton kept surveying. He was careful where he placed his boots. He’d been on the force for nearly two years. This was his first murder scene. But he remembered from the academy that the first rule, after arriving and securing any crime scene, was not to disturb the evidence. “Lots of what looks like burned rugs or carpets.”
     “Sure there’s only five?”
     Dalton wondered how many more old Tug needed to make it interesting. He looked again, this time counting off the charred mounds of flesh on his fingers.
     “Five’s what I see,” he yelled back.
     “Get on up here, then. And step wide of any ash. Don’t contaminate anything.”
     The acrid stench of burned flesh stuck in Dalton’s nostrils like burrs on a hunting dog’s legs. Streams of rancid smoke curled up from the large crater holding the bodies. Dalton stepped wide as Tug ordered, but he wondered how much more contaminated the place could get.
     “You okay, ma’am?” Dalton asked when he reached the two of them. “This must be quite a shock.”
     A thin woman—who Dalton made as no older than himself—with long red hair braided with blue and silver ribbons, struggled to answer. “This is a holy place,” she said. “How could this happen?”
     “You know these people, ma’am?” Dalton asked.
     “Of course she knows them,” Tug barked. “She brought ’em up here. They came from the lodge. Tourists up here—”
     “Travelers,” the woman interrupted. “We call them travelers. They come to experience the sweat lodge. It’s part of their spiritual journey.”
     Tug rolled his eyes. Dalton was glad Tug was standing behind the woman so she couldn’t see.
     “Anyway,” Tug continued. “She brings the travelers up here. Dropped ’em off last night. Comes to pick ’em up this morning, and this is what she sees.”
     “This site is sacred,” the woman said. “What caused this?There was no storm last night. No lightning.”
     A storm doesn’t cause slashes, Dalton thought. Thunder doesn’t gouge.
     Old Tug rested his hand on his holster, threw his shoulders back, and spit to the side. “That’s what we intend to find out, little lady. Don’t you worry.”
     Dalton Rogers took another look toward the smoldering pile of flesh and bones. A sudden gust of chilled air blew against the back of his sweaty neck. He looked up and counted seven hawks circling in the cloudless sky far above the carnage. Another memory of his grandfather floated into his awareness. The two of them were walking through the forest. Grandpa pointed out a hawk and told him the hunting bird always flew alone.
     “So if you see more than one, Dalton,” his grandfather had warned, “you know you got trouble.”
     So fill your hearts with Christmas cheer ’cause Santa Claus comes tonight.

Fixed in Fear
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The Series: Justice

The Fixer [1]

T. E. Woods delivers a fast-paced thriller—the first in an electrifying new series—peopled with sharp, intriguing characters and more twists and turns than a corkscrew.

Never a doubt. Never a mistake. Always for justice. Never for revenge. She’s the person you hire when you need something fixed—permanently. With a strict set of criteria, she evaluates every request and chooses only a few. No more than one job per country, per year. She will only step in if it’s clear that justice will not be served any other way. Her jobs are completed with skill and precision, and never result in inquiry or police investigation. The Fixer is invisible—and quite deadly. . . .

In the office of a clinical psychologist in Olympia, Washington, a beautiful young woman is in terrible emotional pain. She puts up walls, tells lies, and seems to speak in riddles, but the doctor is determined to help her heal, despite the fact that she claims to have hurt many people. As their sessions escalate, the psychologist feels compelled to reach out to the police . . . but it might be too late.

In Seattle, a detective gets a call from his son. A dedicated journalist, he wants his father’s expertise as he looks into a suspicious death. Together they follow the trail of leads toward a stone-cold hired killer—only to find that death has been closer than either could have imagined.

[First published 1 May 2012, Published by Alibi 4 February 2014, 312 pages]

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The Red Hot Fix [2]

In the white-knuckle follow-up to her explosive debut novel, The Fixer, T. E. Woods returns with another tense, intricate thriller.

What do you say, Morton Grant, Chief of Detectives? You got what it takes to find me? Show me a move. . . . Or I’ll have to show you one of mine.

A little more than a year after the Fixer killings, Detective Mort Grant of the Seattle PD once again has his hands full. In the last four months, seven men have been murdered in seedy pay-by-the-hour motels: first strangled, then tied with rope and set on a bed of crushed mothballs, with a red lipstick kiss planted on their foreheads. Speculation abounds that the killer is a prostitute who’s turning her tricks into dead men. The press has taken to calling her “Trixie.”

As Mort follows scant leads in the case, he can’t help but feel continued guilt over his involvement with the Fixer. Though the public holds her up as a folk hero, a vigilante who seeks justice when the system fails, Mort cannot shake the fact that serious crimes have been committed. And though legend says she has vanished, Mort knows exactly where the Fixer is—and he’s conspiring to keep her hidden.

As Trixie strikes again, Mort suddenly finds himself and his family in the crosshairs. Because these new murders are not random, and their perpetrator is hell-bent on luring Mort into a sick and twisted game. If he’s not careful, he’s going to need Fixing.

[Published 1 January 2014, 285 pages]

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The Unforgivable Fix [3]

On the heels of her runaway hits The Fixer and The Red Hot Fix, T. E. Woods ratchets up the tension with her newest explosive thriller in the fast-paced Justice series.

The killer won’t come for you, you fool. He’ll come for me.

Detective Mort Grant of the Seattle PD has finally decided to sell. The home where he and his late wife raised two kids feels too large and too full of old memories. His son is married and raising a family of his own, and despite desperate efforts to find her, Mort has lost touch with his wayward daughter. That is, until the day she walks back into her childhood home and begs for his help.

For the last four years, Allie Grant has been the lover—and confidante, confessor, and counselor—of one of the world’s most powerful and deadly men. But a sudden, rash move has put Allie in the crosshairs of a ruthless Russian crime lord. Mort knows of only one place where Allie will be safe: with The Fixer.

As a hired desperado, The Fixer has killed twenty-three people—and Mort was complicit in her escape from the law. She has built an impregnable house, stocked it with state-of-the-art gear, armed it to the teeth, and locked herself away from the world. But even The Fixer may not be able to get justice for Allie when real evil comes knocking.

[Published 14 October 2014, 298 pages]

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The Justice Series 3-Book Bundle [1-3]

Perfect for fans of Jeff Lindsay’s Dexter thrillers and the novels of Lisa Gardner and Karin Slaughter, the Justice series from T. E. Woods combines heart-pounding suspense with moral weight and razor-sharp characters. These intense thrillers revolve around a mysterious woman known only as The Fixer—an elite assassin who kills in the name of justice. Now the first three volumes of this riveting series are available in one addictive eBook bundle:

THE FIXER
THE RED HOT FIX
THE UNFORGIVABLE FIX

Never a doubt. Never a mistake. Always for justice. Never for revenge. She’s the person you hire when you need something fixed—permanently. With a strict set of criteria, she evaluates every request and chooses only a few. No more than one job per country, per year. She will only step in if it’s clear that justice will not be served any other way. Her jobs are completed with skill and precision, and never result in inquiry or police investigation. The Fixer is invisible—and quite deadly. . . .

In the office of a clinical psychologist in Olympia, Washington, a beautiful young woman is in terrible emotional pain. She puts up walls, tells lies, and seems to speak in riddles, but the doctor is determined to help her heal, despite the fact that she claims to have hurt many people. As their sessions escalate, the psychologist feels compelled to reach out to the police, but it might be too late.

In Seattle, a detective gets a call from his son. A dedicated journalist, he wants his father’s expertise as he looks into a suspicious death. Together they follow the trail of leads toward a stone-cold hired killer—only to find that death has been closer than either could have imagined.

[Published 10 February 2015]

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Fixed in Blood [4]

Perfect for fans of Jeff Lindsay’s Dexter thrillers and the novels of Lisa Gardner and Karin Slaughter, the gritty, action-packed Justice series continues as a depraved mind taunts those who seek retribution on both sides of the law.

I become whatever they want. Whatever they need.

Seattle Chief of Detectives Mort Grant is still reeling from losing his daughter—again. When Allie first walked back into his life, breaking years of silence, he could hardly believe his luck. And after hearing her story, Mort tried to do everything in his power to keep her safe. The only person he trusted with Allie’s life was The Fixer. But, for the first time, The Fixer let him down.

Now Mort has been called in on a gruesome murder case: a beautiful young woman found in a ravine, her body riddled with stab wounds. Within twenty-four hours, the police uncover a snuff film depicting her murder, the killer’s face always just out of shot. When a second body and video are discovered, Mort knows this is no ordinary case.

From a chain of sleazy payday loan shops to the dark underworld of the sex-slave trade, Mort’s chasing a twisted menace to hell and back. But he’s not the only one. Once again, The Fixer is on the hunt—and she’s desperate to make things right.

[Published 16 June 2015, 303 pages]

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About the Author

Teri Woods is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Madison, Wisconsin. Her scientific writings are well represented in peer-reviewed journals and academic texts. Her literary works earned her First Place, Fiction at the 2008 University of Wisconsin Writer's Institute.

Dr. Woods enjoys kayaking, hiking, biking, and hanging around the house while her two dogs help her make sense of the world. Her habit of relaxing by conjuring up any manner of diabolical murder methods and plots often finds her friends urging her to take up knitting.

T. E. Woods is as eager as her fans to return to the thrilling world of the Justice series. She’s busy writing the next installment and is developing a new series set in Madison, Wisconsin.

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