Alter Ego Author:Elizabeth Linington Mystery writer Brendan Monroe is in torment--he's afraid that his falmboyant fictional detective P.I. Roy Barron has come to life! — It began, Monroe explains to Sgt. Dan Valentine of the Santa Monica police, when different items belonging to Barron--his gray monogrammed homburg, a pack of Pall Malls, his Colt .357--mysteriously started to appear... more ». Worse yet, Monroe is finding corrections pencilled onto his latest manuscript . . . in Barron's looping scrawl. Is the author losing his mind--or is someone attempting to make it seem that way?
When Monroe is found dead, Valentine focuses his investigation on the local chapter of Mystery Writers of America, where he faces the fascinating challenge of trying to trap a murderer whose profession is devising diabolical plots.« less