The PJ Gray Series

Someone destroys the life of PJ’s partner, igniting a twisting, vengeful plot Within just a couple of days, detective Leo Schultz’s life unravels. His son Rick is kidnapped and horrifically murdered. The very next day, Schultz’s car runs over a little girl, and he is identified by witnesses as the driver. Only his partner, PJ Gray, believes in his innocence. For city officials, this is not the end of it, as key members of the law and order systems are successively taken down. Forensic psychologist and virtual reality expert Gray must uncover the motives behind the conspiracy, a mystery that ultimately sends her digging around in her partner’s long past in the force. What she finds there forces her to wonder whether she knows Schultz’s true nature at all. Gray must get into the heads of her partner and the killer, before the murderer finds Schultz—or could the target be Gray herself?     

PJ Gray hunts a preteen serial killer who is equally adept with virtual realities Forensic psychologist PJ Gray has never faced this kind of serial killer: The murderer is all of twelve years old. Columbus Wade was a clumsy killer at first, but he soon has a knack for the grisly business, slaughtering teachers with terrible efficiency. He’s had plenty of practice, having mastered murder in the alternate worlds of virtual reality.  Forensic psychologist PJ Gray is no slouch with computers herself, and her simulation models—which allow her to piece together crimes from the perspectives of killer and victim alike—are of great help in the pursuit. But Wade, given to mimicking the reactions of others to blend in, keeps slipping away. And Gray must ask the chilling question: Might he even be among the classmates of her own seventh-grade son?

The riveting first entry in the acclaimed PJ Gray series, in which a police psychologist uses virtual reality forensics to solve a vicious series of homicides  Penelope Jennifer “PJ” Gray is a recently divorced single mother living in St. Louis—and a psychologist turned cyber-profiler who heads the police force’s Computerized Homicide Investigations Project. By using virtual reality technology, Gray is able to get inside the heads of killers and reconstruct their crimes.  The action begins when a talented pianist is savagely murdered, his back carved with a drawing of a dog, his head missing. As similar deaths follow, Gray and her partner—an old-school, technophobe detective named Leo Schultz—must use their skills to trace the serial murderer. Gray Matter marks a brilliant crime-writing debut, as this electrifying story recalls Thomas Harris’s Hannibal Lecter novels.  

PJ Gray plays a high-stakes game of computer cat-and-mouse—with a man who doesn’t exist Someone has hacked into the St. Louis Hospital, and not merely to steal information. The hacker alters patient results and drug dosages in the hospital’s computer network, with fatal consequences. Who better for the police to have on the case than PJ Gray, psychologist and master of forensic computer simulation? As Gray gets to work with her old-school partner Leo Schultz, the pair discover the killer’s trail to be far more opaque than usual: They’re chasing someone who’s successfully manufactured his own death. When they start to untangle his plot, they become part of it, as the brilliant murderer puts Gray to the toughest test she’s ever faced.  An outstanding follow-up to Gray Matter, and featuring a techno-hunt worthy of Patricia Cornwell, Fire Cracker sizzles with suspense.

PJ Gray and her partner strive to uncover a murderer—and reveal their feelings for each other A serial killer dubbed the Metro Mangler is on the loose in St. Louis. PJ Gray, psychologist and virtual reality sleuth, heads the investigation, alongside her partner, the veteran homicide detective Leo Schultz. Are the killings the work of one criminal, or two? The partners sift through baffling evidence, which links to a thirty-year-old crime and a wealthy family’s secrets. But in this case, there’s an added complication: The relationship between the partners is heating up. Gray is a recently divorced single mother, though, and outside of work she’s preoccupied with her son’s new gaming addiction. And on top of it all, there’s another man after her, too—she’s next on the Mangler’s hit list.