Intellectual property attorneys, romance publishers, and librarians—the very last people you'd expect to be mixed up in murder! Add a pinch of authentic Civil War re-enactors and a sparkling tour of Kansas City, and voilà, a classic yet up-to-the-minute crime.
Rep and Melissa Pennyworth head west from Indiana to a re-enactment on a Civil War battle in Kansas City, Missouri. Rep is really in quest on a cutting-edge copyright case connected with romance publishing house Jackrabbit Press. He finds a corpse instead....
Mike Bowen, a trial lawyer practicing in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is the author of numerous mystery novels, including Screenscam (2002), which introduced Rep and Melissa Pennyworth. Bowen has been a member and moderator of panels at several Bouchercons and has made presentations at numerous other mystery-related events. He wrote the entry on The American Legal System for the Oxford Companion to Crime and Mystery Writing, and was a member of the panels that selected the winner of the 1995 Edgar Award for Best Mystery and the 1996 Edgar Award for Best Critical or Biographical Work. Bowen graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1976. While at Harvard, he served on the Board of Editors of the Harvard Law Review, and was a member of the winning team and was named the best oralist in the Ames Competition (moot court). Bowen lives with his wife, Sara Armbruster Bowen and their younger children, John, Marguerite and James, in Fox Point, a suburb of Milwaukee.