Blood of the Innocents
(2025)(The fifth book in the Chiara Corelli Mystery series)
A novel by Catherine Maiorisi
After recording the last interview of a month-long media extravaganza orchestrated by the brass, NYPD Detectives Chiara Corelli and P.J. Parker are hoping for time out of the spotlight working cold cases and/or solving low profile murders. But the brutal murder of Alessandra Moreau, a singer on track to becoming a superstar, in the living room of New York State Senator Leigh Drayman, a trans woman, is anything but.
Besides Drayman, only Moreau’s twin sister and her wife knew she was a trans woman, so Corelli and Parker focus their attention on three suspects—the agent/manager stealing from her, a man from her attorney’s office who assaulted her, and H, a rejected lover who she fears.
But the investigation, like a kaleidoscope, constantly changes. And when they find thirteen trans women murdered in exactly the manner as Moreau in just over two years, their focus changes and they enlist the senator’s help to get the NYPD to set up a task force to investigate the murders of trans women.
With the murder of two more trans women in New York City, the killer seems to be taunting them. But they are no closer to finding him then they were after Moreau was murdered. And then, an extended search reveals two much older cases, one sixteen and the other seventeen years ago.
As they dig deeper into those early murders, they eliminate suspects and begin to focus on the one with motive, means and opportunity.
Genre: Mystery
Besides Drayman, only Moreau’s twin sister and her wife knew she was a trans woman, so Corelli and Parker focus their attention on three suspects—the agent/manager stealing from her, a man from her attorney’s office who assaulted her, and H, a rejected lover who she fears.
But the investigation, like a kaleidoscope, constantly changes. And when they find thirteen trans women murdered in exactly the manner as Moreau in just over two years, their focus changes and they enlist the senator’s help to get the NYPD to set up a task force to investigate the murders of trans women.
With the murder of two more trans women in New York City, the killer seems to be taunting them. But they are no closer to finding him then they were after Moreau was murdered. And then, an extended search reveals two much older cases, one sixteen and the other seventeen years ago.
As they dig deeper into those early murders, they eliminate suspects and begin to focus on the one with motive, means and opportunity.
Genre: Mystery