Her Deadly Game (Keera Duggan, #1)

by Robert Dugoni

unlike a doctor, they never had the chance to save a life.

Rossi’s day began when the victims’ days ended.

Her parents named her Ciara Katherine Duggan, but since no one outside her family could spell or say the Gaelic version of her name correctly, she used the phonetic spelling: Keera. In Gaelic her name meant “dark,” which fit her coal-black hair, though not her crystal-blue eyes. “Black Irish,” her mother had said.

This being the first Sunday of August, and Keera not being out of the country or dead, she drove to her parents’ home for the family dinner.

He had messengers deliver bullshit motions at the end of the day intended to make busywork and keep Keera from focusing on the next day’s witnesses. It didn’t. All it did was piss off Ella, and a pissed-off Ella was a real bitch, and Keera meant that in the most flattering way.

“This is a robbery waiting to happen,” he replied. “That’s what everywhere, USA, has become.”

“Nothing is guaranteed. If there is anything you want to do in life, do it. Don’t wait.”

As many of my loyal readers know, each novel I give myself a challenge. In the novel Her Deadly Game, I wanted to create a protagonist who came from a dysfunctional family, but who had escaped by becoming a chess prodigy. Why chess? Because I knew very good trial attorneys, like my cousin Maurice Fitzgerald, who were also very good chess players. Did the two go together? They thought so.