Clean Kill (A Nicky Sullivan Mystery, 1)

Nicky Sullivan is the resident manager of a sober living home in Chicago. There she rides herd on ten newly sober addicts and alcoholics, trying to point them in the right direction while keeping their chaos to a minimum. But when one of her residents is murdered, Nicky turns to the investigative skills honed during her past career as a homicide detective. She calls on her old police partner who has been assigned the murder investigation along with his new partner, a woman beautiful enough to give Nicky pause. The body count starts to mount as it becomes clear a serial killer is at work, targeting newly relapsed women, all of whom have some connection to Nicky. Each death makes her feel she’s wielded the knife herself. In the midst of the tragedy, she finds herself falling in love.

With the lives of fragile women in the balance, Nicky finds her own sobriety threatened. Can Nicky save her lover and find the killer? How many others must die before she does?

 Anne Laughlin is the author of six novels for BSB. She has won four Goldie awards for her work and been short-listed three times for a Lammy Award. Her short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies. Her story "It Only Occured to Me Lately" was a finalist in the Saints and Sinners short fiction contest. Anne has attended writing residencies at Ragdale, Vermont Studio Center, and others. She was named an emerging writer by the Lambda Literary Foundation in 2008 and asked to return in 2014. She lives in Chicago, the setting for many of her novels, with her wife, Linda Braasch.