Please welcome mystery, thriller and romance author Debra Webb
I've written several stand-alone stories. I love stand-alone stories, but series are
my heart. The characters become like family. In fact, a certain character had
been lounging around in my head for a long while, just biding her time and
waiting for her turn. Her name is Jessie Lee Harris and she has spent seventeen
years working with the FBI. Her parents passed away when she was very young and
she and her sister spent their formative years in foster homes. Upon graduating
high school, Jess couldn’t wait to put her hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, in
her rearview mirror. She and her high school sweetheart, Dan Burnett, left for
college full of passion and with big dreams. But sometimes passion fizzles and
dreams don’t always come true. Four years later Dan returned to Birmingham and
Jess went on to become a celebrated profiler for the Bureau.
Fast-forward
twenty years and things have changed again. Jess’s personal and professional
life are crashing down around her. On administrative leave after a bumbled investigation
that resulted in a suspected serial killer going free, Jess welcomes an
unexpected invitation to escape from her current reality. Her expertise is
needed on a case involving four missing young women. The problem is, the case
is in Birmingham and the top cop is Chief of Police Dan Burnett.
Jess
finds herself spiraling into the past that she’d thought she left behind. And
if having sparks fly between her and Dan isn’t frustrating and distracting
enough, the serial killer who got away has followed her to Birmingham!
As
I brainstormed the series, I revisited a concept I had developed a few years
ago called the Scales of Justice. The idea was to have a series where each book
focused on a different level of that scale, beginning with the least heinous of
intents. The Scales of Justice seemed to scream courtroom and that side of
justice and that wasn’t where I wanted to go. After much consideration, I came
up with the Faces of Evil. The stories are more about the motive for the crime
than the crime itself. Of course, the goal is to solve the mystery and the case
but in Jess’s opinion the crime is all about motive. The motive, she swears,
will reveal the identity of the one committing the crime. This is Jess’s
summation of evil:
