The Deepest Cut »

Dianne Emley was born in Los Angeles, California. Except for her junior year in college when she studied at the Université de Bordeaux, France, she has always lived in and around Los Angeles. She has a BA in philosophy and an MBA in marketing, both from UCLA. She has held jobs as varied as drill press operator, polling place recruiter, California Department of Consumer Affairs complaint handler, clothing boutique buyer, egg and poultry industry marketer, software company sales manager, and technical writer.

 
Back from the dead. That’s how it feels for Nan Vining, a Pasadena homicide cop determined to find the brutal madman who attacked her a year ago. Nan’s daughter calls the unknown assailant T. B. Mann—The Bad Man. On the job, Nan breaks rules and steals evidence, building a case file based on the certainty that T. B. Mann is obsessed with women who wear uniforms, that he hunts them, kills them, then adorns them with a pearl necklace.

At the crime scene of her official assignment, the murder of an ex-con, Nan spots a graffiti tag and is sure, against all reason, that T. B. Mann was there, too. Further complicating matters is Nan’s developing relationship with Detective Jim Kissick, but she knows that opening her heart means losing control. Then T. B. Mann reemerges from the shadows for a final confrontation, bringing Nan to the sudden, horrifying realization that her killer has baited the perfect trap.

Publishers Weekly

Pasadena police detective Nan Vining once again confronts her "personal bad man," the serial killer known as T.B. Mann, who's been stalking her and murdering California policewomen for years, in the sharp conclusion to Emley's romantic suspense trilogy (after Cut to the Quick). Encouraged by her lover and Pasadena PD partner, Det. Jim Kissick, Nan's determined to catch T.B., though she's barely recovered from being stabbed by the psycho a year earlier. An alarming new twist-a cryptic message T.B. leaves at a crime scene where a former NLK (Northside Latin Kings) gang member, Scrappy Espinoza, was fatally shot-leads Nan to pursue an Asian gang connection. The stress builds as Emily's budding relationship with Ken Zhang, the 17-year-old son of the owner of the building where Scrappy was killed, complicates the investigation. Lucid prose and an ending that leaves the door open for further Vining exploits more than make up for the familiar serial-killer plot line. (Feb.)

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