Killer Image by Wendy Tyson
As Philadelphia’s premier image consultant, Allison Campbell helps others reinvent themselves, but her most successful transformation was her own after a scandal nearly ruined her. Now she moves in a world of powerful executives, wealthy, eccentric ex-wives and twisted ethics.
When Allison’s latest Main Line client, the fifteen-year-old Goth daughter of a White House hopeful, is accused of the ritualistic murder of a local divorce attorney, Allison fights to prove her client’s innocence when no one else will. But unraveling the truth brings specters from her own past. And in a place where image is everything, the ability to distinguish what’s real from the facade may be the only thing that keeps Allison alive.
Guest Post
Growing Pains – Wendy Tyson
Recently I had the good fortune of seeing KILLER IMAGE on a bookstore shelf for the first time. I snagged a picture and put it on Facebook, and a supportive friend asked me whether the sighting had given me a little thrill. Indeed, it had. But it was also a surreal moment, and I felt a tug of remorse, an emotion similar to what I felt at my son’s high school graduation ceremony this past spring.
While I had given birth to my son Ian, watched him grow and mature, and endured seemingly endless arguments over messy rooms and homework and the forty thousand times I had to ask him to take out the garbage on Friday mornings despite the fact that the garbage truck always came on Fridays, when I looked at him on that stage, I saw someone else. I saw a glimpse of the man he would someday be. And through tears of happiness, I grieved just a little bit for the child he once was and the years we had spent together. While nothing is quite like the joy (or pain) of parenthood, writing a book – seeing it through revision after revision, getting to know the characters, experiencing emotions elicited by the very act of writing down their lives – is akin to raising a child and watching him leave.
I started KILLER IMAGE more than half a dozen years ago. I worked on it in stops and starts, and it took me years to revise because of many intervening personal events. Every day I did a little more, got a little closer to the goal of completion and, fingers and toes crossed, publication. And it finally happened.
As parents, we enjoy (or struggle through, depending on the day) all of those little moments with our children. These moments eventually lead to emotional and mental growth, despite a rate of change that can be so incremental that we don’t even realize growth is occurring until some milestone occurs and we see the child standing there, all grown up. A book is similar. It starts out as a blank page or computer screen, and, eventually, with perseverance and patience and a whole lot of soul searching, a novel is born.
And so yes, I was thrilled to see KILLER IMAGE on that shelf. And grateful – for beta readers and agents and publishers and publicists and all of the people who helped me along the way, not to mention readers who took the time to get to know my characters. Thrilled, grateful and a little teary. Not because I wasn’t happy to see that book on the shelf. I was. But because it felt like letting go.
Review
Killer Image by Wendy Tyson is a fantastic mystery. It is wonderfully crafted I couldn’t have been more enthralled. Allison is a character that, even though she is flawed, she is still very likable and you want things to work out well for her. Wendy Tyson most definitely has a way with words. I was gripped right from the beginning and was not able to put this story down. If you’re looking for a great mystery, look no further. This will have you staying up late wanting to read until you know ‘whodunit’.
About the Author
Wendy Tyson wrote her first story at age eight and it’s been love ever since. When not writing, Wendy enjoys reading other people’s novels, traveling, hiking, and playing hooky at the beach–and if she can combine all four, even better. Originally from the Philadelphia area, Wendy has returned to her roots and lives there again with her husband, three kids and two muses, dogs Molly and Driggs. She and her husband are passionate organic gardeners and have turned their small urban lot into a micro farm. Killer Image is Wendy’s first novel in the Allison Campbell mystery series.
Wendy has also authored The Seduction of Miriam Cross, a mystery that will be released by E-Lit Books on November 1, 2013.
Find Wendy at:
www.WATyson.com and on Twitter and Facebook.
Have added this book to my wish list and hope to be able to order it very soon.
Thank you for the great reading due to the great writing.
Cynthia