QSFer Patricia Loofbourrow has a new bisexual multiracial polyamorous steampunk book out in her Red Dog Conspiracy series: “The Ten of Spades.”
Be careful what you wish for …
After eleven years trapped in the Spadros crime syndicate, 23-year-old private eye Jacqueline Spadros is an independent woman, free to run her investigation business.
But her problems are only beginning.
Deeply in debt, Jacqui is in danger from both the rogue Spadros men calling themselves “The Ten of Spades” and the ruthless Red Dog Gang — who may be one and the same.
Jacqui is determined to find Black Maria, the key to the identity of the Red Dog Gang’s secretive leader. To survive long enough to do that, Jacqui needs a paying case.
The one she’s offered may put her in the most danger of all …
The Ten of Spades is part 5 of a 13-part serial novel – please begin with The Jacq of Spades or the Red Dog Conspiracy Act 1 box set.
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Excerpt
The door slammed in my face. A cold breeze flapped the corners of my overcoat, and I quickly reached up to keep my hat atop my head.
“I’m sorry, mum,” my lady’s maid Amelia Dewey said.
Carriages and horses, women and men passed by, never giving me so much as a glance. The wooden banister snagged my glove as I descended the cracked steps. The midmorning light was weak, thin, pale.
Amelia glanced around. “Do we go on?”
Did I have any choice? “We go on.”
But it was much the same on 24th Street as on all the rest. The response varied from fearful curtsies to angry curses. The answer still was no.
No, they didn’t need an investigator.
No, they knew no one who might.
No, I couldn’t come in.
“Fucking Pot rag” was the most blunt way it’d been expressed, but their eyes all said it.
The worst was on west 4th, when an old widow woman offered me charity. Even in the Pot I wasn’t a beggar, nor – as some put it – a new way for the Spadros Family to gouge their quadrant.
I wasn’t so far gone yet as to take their pity.
We returned home for luncheon. My butler Blitz Spadros opened the door for us. “Any luck?”
I sighed, shook my head, went past him into our home.
It was a good place, those few apartments. Now that I think of it, the place was built to be a boarding house. An entry, a small parlor through a door to the right. My two rooms lay to the left: the front one my bedroom, the next my office, each with their own bath and toilet. Another room lay beyond that. Stairs rose straight ahead to a large room with picture windows. Behind the parlor, a door led to our kitchen. Behind the stairs a hall went to first the kitchen (through a door to the right) then behind he kitchen to the rooms Blitz and his wife Mary shared. A closet nestled under the stair.
The building was a duplex. Our half faced onto 33 1/3 Street. It had a side door from the kitchen, which opened onto an alley barely wide enough to walk down.
This was all I owned in the world, and if something didn’t happen soon, I’d lose it too.
Author Bio
Patricia Loofbourrow is the NY Times and USA Today best selling author of the Red Dog Conspiracy steampunk noir crime fiction series. She has been a professional blogger, author, and editor since 2000 and began writing novels in 2005. Her first published novel, The Jacq of Spades, released in 2015 and has sold over 20,000 copies worldwide.
A native of southern California, Patricia Loofbourrow lives in the central US. You can see all her books at pattyloof.com