This week’s interview with DK Coutant was moved to my mystery blog as I begin to transfer the mystery-related interviews to that more appropriate venue. To read the interview, please click HERE.
Meanwhile, let me show you her debut book, including an excerpt, and introduce you to the author.
Evil Alice and the Borzoi (A Cleo Cooper Mystery)
Genre: cozy mystery
Paradise is shaken when the body of a young woman is dragged onto a university research vessel during a class outing in Hilo Bay. Cleo Cooper is shaken when she finds her favorite student is on the hook for the murder.
Danger lurks on land and sea as Cleo and her friends are enticed to search for the true killer. In between paddling, swimming, and arguing with her boyfriend, Cleo discovers all is not what it seems on the Big Island of Hawaii. But will she figure out the truth before she becomes the next victim?
Buy Links:
https://www.amazon.com/Evil-Alice-Borzoi-Cooper-Mystery-ebook/dp/B0BS4JKGKS/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1676220929&sr=8-1
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/evil-alice-and-the-borzoi-dk-coutant/1142929587?ean=2940186721369
Excerpt:
As I was musing ‘what ifs’, my eyes drifted to an intense mountain of a man in a red shirt so saturated with color I expected it to drip onto his jeans. The almost-to-the-elbow sleeves revealed ropey forearms the color of a dried kukui nut. The bones in his broad face, made me think of a tiger, not traditionally handsome, but arresting. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Almost as if he could feel my scrutiny, he turned his head and looked directly at me. My pulse quickened and I froze – an impala trapped in the gaze of a predator. I couldn’t look away. A barely perceptible smile appeared on his face. He knew the effect he was having on me. Embarrassment gave me the strength to jerk my eyes down to my feet.
What the hell was wrong with me? Maybe low blood sugar? I didn’t eat much breakfast.
I risked a glance back at him. Damn, he was still looking at me with his self-assured smile. He greeted my glance with a hint of a nod and turned his attention back to the speaker. Flustered, I too looked back at the speaker, but I couldn’t make out what the guy was saying so I went back to looking at the crowd, carefully avoiding the red-shirted predator.
There were a lot of locals who I didn’t know, but I saw Rikki and Gina standing together. No sign of Kawika, Gina’s cop-husband. I would have thought the police would want to come to the funeral as part of an investigation now that they suspected foul play.
DK Coutant graduated from Davidson College with a Psychology degree, and applied her behavioral training at Sea World, training dolphins and whales. Realizing that scrubbing fish buckets might get old, she went back to school and earned a Ph.D. in Psychology. Her academic career began at the University of Southern Maine before DK made the jump to the University of Hawaii at Hilo rising to Department Chair of the Psychology Department. After many happy years in Hawaii, DK made the move out of academics to become a professional geopolitical forecaster for GJP, Inc ( https://goodjudgment.com/Inc ) and INFER ( https://www.infer-pub.com/). Evil Alice and the Borzoi is her first work of fiction published by The Wild Rose Press.
Something unique/unusual that isn’t in your regular bio: “That’s a tough one. I threw everything but the kitchen sink into my bio. But okay, here’s one… We have an Old English Sheepdog puppy. She is seven months old and named Beasley. Most people guess she was named after the talking doll from the 1960s, but that is not the case. My husband and I are big fans of David Beasley, the Executive Director of the UN World Food Program. One night after seeing him being interviewed on PBS we added Beasley to the top of our puppy name list. When I met the puppy in person, Beasley was the only name she responded to, and she has been Beasley ever since.”
Author Contacts:
Website: https://www.dkcoutant.com/
Twitter: @dkCoutant
Instagram: @DKCandDog