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Diva's Fool—
Winner of 2008
Lovey Award in
Best Paranormal
Category.
N O V E L S
THE DIVA'S FOOL
Book Zero in the Order of the Tarot Chronicles
Alexandria Vilkas, Chicago reporter, does more than write about the supernatural. She peeks behind the veil of death to investigate murders of the paranormal. Opera Diva Carmen Dellamorte, famous for her passion of Tarot cards, mysteriously dies onstage at the Chicago Lyric Opera House during a performance of Macbeth.
The characters in The Diva's Fool are those found in Skullduggery (now available as an e-book with Echelon Press), in which Alexandria Vilkas, a journalist/detective writes for Gypsy Magazine, a bimonthly in Chicago that covers supernatural phenomenon. Alexandria was such a hit in solving the murder of Chicago's first Hispanic mayor that her editor has decided her star occult reporter should begin a series, a spine-tingling one that would increase the fledgling magazine's circulation. At the same time, Alex is preparing to enter the Order of the Tarot. Her spiritual advisor is Christopher Warlick, a psychic on Archer Avenue on the South Side of Chicago, who is also known as The Wizard. He has given her a two-pronged test. The easier one involves avoiding the advances of a married man; the more difficult concerns Alex solving a murder.
The story begins with Alex interviewing Carmen Dellamorte, an opera diva playing Lady Macbeth at the Chicago Lyric Opera House who has an interest in Tarot cards, a few hours before her final performance. The opera diva turns the tables on Alex, however, and commissions her as a ghost writer to organize all the material the diva has collected on her father, a wealthy man who collects guns. After the interview, Alex settles into watching the performance and is shocked, as is the rest of the audience, to see the diva die onstage. Her boss-editor urges Alex to get involved, and from there Alex begins to investigate the diva's murder.
She interviews a colorful cast of suspects, including the diva's publicist, an animal psychic; the diva's roommate, Castrato, also known as The Fool; the deputy conductor, who delivers a poisonous plant; the diva's understudy, who launched the curse of the famous Scottish play by uttering its name three times before the diva's last performance; and the diva's manager, a married man with four children who mercilessly flirts with Alex.
The Wizard counsels her, gives her a Tarot reading, which portends her troubling future, and steadies her for the demanding tasks ahead during a guided meditation. Alex clashes with Joe Burke, a down-to-earth Chicago police detective who sneers at Alex's techniques and her bent for the supernatural. Eventually, begrudgingly, Joe learns to respect her. The story ends with Alex solving the case, and her boss is now busy looking for a murder related to the supernatural and the next card in the Tarot deck, The Magician.
SKULLDUGGERY
Supernatural reporter Alexandria Vilkas launches a feature on Crystal Skull, but is skeptical of its metaphysical powers --- until the Chicago mayor dies in her arms. Now the prime suspect in the mayor's murder, Alex needs to clear her name, fast. Along the way, she begins to suspect her own mother, discovers a cigarette-selling scam that's making some city aldermen rich, stumbles into some bad shenanigans in a tortilla factory, and gets attacked by a lovelorn astrologer. Meanwhile, a knock-out brawl among the town's fifty aldermen erupts in downtown City Hall and Alex desperately wonders if she'll still be alive for the next mayoral election. Can she unearth the connection between the Crystal Skull and the murder before it's too late?