The red scream

In her latest, hard-hitting novel of suspense, award-winning writer Mary Willis Walker introduces a gutsy new heroine - Texas-based crime reporter Molly Cates - and a chilling tale of violence and revenge.

As The Red Scream begins, Molly has just published her first true crime book, which describes the blood-curdling exploits of serial killer Louie Bronk. Now Louie is on death row, about to be executed by lethal injection. Molly will be there as a witness, and she wants to write about it - the final coda to her story.

But suddenly she's being strongly discouraged - by her boss at the Lone Star Monthly and by Charlie McFarland, the millionaire real estate developer whose first wife, Tiny, was Bronk's most famous victim - and the only one whose murder is a capital offense.

Then Molly starts to receive dark hints that Louie may not have killed Tiny after all. First the veracity of her book is threatened, and then her very life. Caught between moral imperative and personal threat, Molly realizes that by attempting to save Louie, she will be putting herself in jeopardy, and discrediting her own work.

Mary Willis Walker brings a lusty new voice to the mystery scene. In Molly Cates she has created a character just cheeky and appealing enough to take her place among the top rank of female protagonists - Kinsey Millhone, Kat Colorado, and Kay Scarpetta.