Punish the Deed by Diane Fanning

I recently got my hands on the second book in Diane Fanning’s mystery/police procedural series starring Lieutenant Lucinda Pierce. I’ve been looking forward to following Lucinda again. Lucinda is, in a lot of ways, typical of women police officers. She’s tough and believes in her work. In others, she’s very different. After taking a shotgun blast to the face, one side is mauled and she lost an eye. In this book, she’s taking the first real steps to plastic surgery, but is still on the job. Along with dealing with the physical injuries, she’s working on the emotional ones. Setting aside her personal problems, Lucinda now has to deal with a violent killer who hides in the shadows and who eventually threatens her own life. She’s got quite a few other things going on in her life - like the rest of us. Lucinda Pierce is no one-dimensional character. I enjoyed discovering the different layers of Lucinda. Here’s a snippet of Diane’s writing in Punish the Deed:

“She’d been to many crime scenes and seen many gruesome photos from others. Those sights were not alien -- they were the stuff of her life. She could think and work as she looked on the gory remains of a brutal death. She could hash over the details with her fellow professionals without the slightest churn in her gut. She swore that none of it bothered her any longer. But then there were those images that burned into her brain. The visuals she wanted to forget but instead they hung on, haunting every blink of her eye and troubling her dreams.”

The intensity of the plot and the believable development of the characters keep you reading. Fanning comes to mystery writing with a credible writing pedigree. She’s the best-selling author of 10 true crime novels, as well as another mystery series starring Molly Mullet. You may have seen Diane Fanning on Court TV or the Discovery Channel. If she ever comes to speak in your area, go hear her. I sat in on a talk she gave at the University of Texas on The Criminal Mind and she is a great speaker. Her talk sent chills down our spines. If you or someone you know likes mystery/police procedurals with a strong, totally believable protagonist, I recommend you look for Punish the Deed by Diane Fanning. It’s available online at Barnes & Noble or on Amazon. 

The late Helen Ginger (1952-2021) was an author, blogger, and the Coordinator of Story Circle Network's Editorial Services and writing coach. She was also a former mermaid. She taught public speaking as well as writing and marketing workshops. Helen was the author of Angel Sometimes, Dismembering the Past, and three books in TSTC Publishing’s TechCareers series.