Mercy Find Me: A Derringer Award Finalist Short Story: Nora Dockson Legal Thrillers

By Diana Deverell

Oregon correctional center inmate Winnie Yates is serving mandatory minimum sentences adding up to nineteen years and two months. Locked up from age twenty until she turns thirty-nine.

A harsh punishment when her victim came through the so-called home invasion with only a bruise on her forehead.

Winnie's appeal failed but today she has a chance to make a better deal. Her reward will be immediate release, shaving forty months off her sentence.

Winnie has only to own her crime. Convince her victim she regrets what she did.

She has the words down pat.

But how does she demonstrate true remorse when she's never seen anyone do it?

When today's session ends, will Winnie walk back to her cell? Or through the sally port to freedom?

Originally published in the anthology magazine Fiction River – Justice edited by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, "Mercy Find Me" was a finalist for the 2019 Derringer Award for short mystery fiction.

A Derringer and Macavity Award finalist acclaimed for "sharp storytelling" (Publishers Weekly), Diana Deverell brings you the poignant story of a woman who comes to terms with both retribution and mercy, as well as her own failings.

Buy "Mercy Find Me" and discover a dramatic scene that happens offstage in Help Me Nora, Diana's first Nora Dockson legal thriller.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sorrel Press
• Release date: Oct 19, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393475972

Diana Deverell

Diana Deverell has published seven novels, a short fiction collection, and many short stories. Her latest project is a series of legal thrillers set in Spokane and featuring Nora Dockson, a lawyer who specializes in appeal of life imprisonment and death penalty sentences. The first, Help Me Nora, was released in July, 2014. The second, Right the Wrong, was released in March, 2015. The third book will be published in late 2015. For the latest update, visit Diana at www.dianadeverell.com Diana made her debut as a novelist in 1998 with a series of international thrillers featuring State Department counterterrorist analyst Kathryn “Casey” Collins: 12 Drummers Drumming, Night on Fire, and East Past Warsaw. The three novels are also available in a single ebook, The Casey Collins Trilogy. Diana’s short story, "Warm Bodies in a Cold War", originally published in 1996 under a different title, introduced Casey to the readership of the Foreign Service Journal. The prequel No Place for an Honest Woman expanded on Casey’s early career. The story and all four thrillers are now available as individual ebooks. In 2000, Diana’s short fiction starring FBI Special Agent Dawna Shepherd started making regular appearances in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Her mystery collection, Run & Gun: A Dozen Tales of Girls with Guns includes eleven Dawna Shepherd stories first published by Alfred Hitchcock, plus all-new “Latin Groove”. Both the collection and “In Plain Sight,” her 2013 mystery, are available in e-editions. Dawna’s latest adventure, “Blown,” appeared in the Kobo Special Edition of Pulse Pounders, the Januaury 2015 issue of Fiction River anthology. In 2012, Diana released her comic mystery novel, Murder, Ken Kesey, and Me as an ebook. Other digital editions include "Heart Failure", a short story set on the day Jim Morrison died, written to order for a publisher of textbooks for Danish teens learning English. Diana is a member (and past board member) of the International Association of Crime Writers. She belongs to the American Women’s Club in Denmark and her short fiction has appeared in Good Works: Prose and Poetry by Ex-Pat Women in Denmark.

Book preview

Mercy Find Me: A Derringer Award Finalist Short Story

By Diana Deverell

Finalist for the 2019 Derringer Award from the Short Mystery Fiction Society

Published by Sorrel Press

www.SorrelPress.com

Table of Contents

Mercy Find Me: A Derringer Award Finalist Short Story by Diana Deerell

PRAISE FOR DIANA DEVERELL’S FICTION

Mercy Find Me: A Derringer Award Finalist Short Story

1

2

3

4

5

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

OTHER EBOOKS BY DIANA DEVERELL

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

COPYRIGHT

PRAISE FOR DIANA DEVERELL’S FICTION

Nora Dockson legal thrillers

Lay Bare the Lie, the sixth and newest Nora Dockson legal thriller, tops all the others in so many ways. There’s a gripping I-didn’t-see-that-coming plot, the relationships among the continuing characters are evolving, and the descriptions of Oregon and Washington are wonderful. (IBooks reader review)

A great character, a great series—I highly recommend it to people. (Stephen Campbell, CrimeFiction.FM)

Deverell has a gift that grabs the reader so one cares about what happens to every character in the story. Once one starts Nora’s clear sighted and brilliant pursuit of justice it’s hard to put the book down! (Amazon reader review)

The series is great; it’s got the theme of the hard scrabble up-from-poverty Nora doing her battle of wits against a scheming, social-climbing assistant attorney general, laced with tons of good detective work. (Amazon reader review)

Help Me Nora is a compelling gritty novel. I could not put it down and found the legal background fascinating. (Goodreads review)

* * *

Bitch Out of Hell could be a story on the six o’clock news - the outsourcing of America’s military functions, shady corporate dealings, the suspicious death of a whistleblowing board member, and a special prosecutor’s investigation." (iBooks reader review)

"Helluva read! I really enjoyed this. I hope there are more books coming. The characters are intriguing,