About The Author
Vincent Panettiere is a former literary agent, representing writers and directors in televIsion and film. At the same time he was certified by the Major League Players Association (MLBPA) to represent major league baseball players. Previously he was an executive with Twentieth Century Fox and CBS.
A WOMAN TO BLAME is his first novel.
Previously he wrote and published The Internet Financing Illusion which investigated the dark side of the Internet and the scams committed upon unsuspecting businessmen.
About the Book
A thoroughbred race horse collapses and dies after finishing last in a race he was favored to win. Hours later the stallion’s trainer, a young woman with a promising career, is found dead on a suburban Chicago beach.
A woman to blame? The police draw a facile solution - murder/suicide.
Mike Hegan, a veteran police detective being forced to retire on medical disability, refuses to believe the official version. His search for the truth
leads him to a promontory on a Caribbean island where scores are settled and lives lost.
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Book Excerpt by Vincent Panettiere
CHAPTER ONE“What’s the mystery?” Mike Hegan asked as his boots shuffled a path through the newly fallen snow. They were not the words he would use whenever called to the scene of the most recent homicide in Chicago. As the icy winds of January sliced into the city from Lake Michigan, Hegan cared less about his destination. He wanted the slog to end so his cheeks, all four of them, could thaw.
“You’ll see. We’re almost there,” a warm, female voice answered with barely a trace of shiver. Hegan knew the voice belonged to Lucy. As they made their way up Michigan Avenue, she was barely visible. Her head was bent against the wind and snow sprinkles. Her body was swaddled in a floor-length cranberry colored down coat.
“I heard a voice but all I can see is cranberry bubble wrap.”
“Hush. This coat is the best present you ever gave me. It’s warmer than you are some nights.”
“What?”
Lucy stopped and pointed at a sign hanging above a stairway between Joe’s shoe repair and a Subway sandwich shop. “Madame Stella’s Dance Studio—2nd Floor”
The sign did not answer Hegan’s initial question, but prompted a flurry of others he was about to unleash until the fingers of Lucy’s woolen mitten gently rested against his lips.
“We’re going to be married in six months and you dance like the creature in Young Frankenstein.”
“I do not . . .” Hegan stopped protesting and launched into the heavy footed shuffle impersonation of Peter Boyle while trying to sing “Puttin’ on the Ritz” through pressed lips. Humor had saved Hegan from uncomfortable moments and situations since he was an adolescent. Now, he felt his comedic chops emerging to rescue him again.
“Start climbing,” was all Lucy said as she headed up a long flight of steps to the second floor.
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