They Said It Was Murder

Before I could shove my wife, Cheryl Craig, into the ocean, I turned myself in. The security guard frowned. "What? Are you saying that you're going to kill someone on this cruise?" I nodded. "It's 5:05 p.m. right now. In 20 minutes, I'll push my wife off this cruise ship. You need to arrest me, now." He stared at me like I had lost my mind. "You've got to be kidding! I've never seen anyone confess before the crime." He waved me off and started to walk away, so I had no choice but to start smashing things in the lobby. Only when the cuffs snapped around my wrists did I finally breathe again. In my last life, Cheryl was pushed off this very ship and fell into the ocean. Before I could even finish arranging her funeral, the police came for me. The ship's security footage clearly showed me pushing her overboard, but at that exact time, I was in a room with my father. There was no way I could've done it. I asked my father to testify for me, but he said I had already been planning to kill Cheryl for the insurance money because my company was falling apart. In the end, I was sentenced to death for murder. Even as I faced execution, I still couldn't understand it. I didn't do it, so why did everyone insist that I had? When I opened my eyes again, I was back to before Cheryl fell into the ocean.

The day before the family’s position transfer deadline, I received an order assigning me to the Bellarosa branch. It had come from Don Enzo Vitelli, who also happened to be my fiance. My fingers went cold as I dialed his number. His voice was drawling, as if he had just rolled out of bed. “Oh, Lucrezia submitted that for you. She said it was a prank. She wanted to see if you’d notice. Well, you did notice, so just cancel it yourself.” Lucrezia was the new assistant with whom he had a thing with. I held the phone and stayed silent for a long moment. All those six years I had fought for my place in the family, yet someone was treating it as a prank. I did not argue or scream. I simply packed my things calmly and boarded the flight to Bellarosa on schedule. Enzo panicked. He called back. His voice finally lost that lazy drawl. “I told you to cancel it. Have you cancelled it?” “No.”

My mother-in-law was rushed to the hospital with sudden chest pain and sent straight into emergency surgery. However, my wife, who was the head of the thoracic department, insisted that her clueless young male apprentice be the lead surgeon instead. The apprentice stood in front of the operating table. He couldn’t even recognize half of the surgical instruments laid out before him. He pouted and fidgeted a little. “I forgot again…” My wife just smiled indulgently at him. Even though the patient’s chest had been opened, she patiently spent ten minutes explaining the instruments to him before the surgery finally began. In the end, the apprentice’s hand trembled, and he accidentally punctured the tumor. Terrified, he let out a sharp scream and threw himself into my wife’s arms. To console him, my mother-in-law’s only chance at survival was gone, and she died right there on the operating table. My wife walked out of the operating room, supporting her badly shaken apprentice, and glanced at me indifferently. “Before you take your mother’s body away, provide an affidavit of non-prosecution to the hospital. Your mom couldn’t have been saved anyway. Anthony is still young. His future can’t be ruined because of your mother.” Only then did I realize that she thought the person lying on that operating table was my mother. I chuckled and said, “I'm afraid I'm not qualified to do that.”

The prettiest girl in our class, Mandy Smith, died unexpectedly in our dorm. When the police took statements, my two other roommates and I pleaded guilty. I took out Mandy’s love letter to my boyfriend. “I killed her because she was seducing my boyfriend.” Anna Anderson took out a purchase history for cyanide. “I killed her because she snatched my overseas studies spot from me.” Fiona Lee took out an expulsion letter. “I killed her because she reported me for cheating.” All three of us hated Mandy. However, the police found that all of us had alibis during Mandy’s time of death. The counselor also asked us to stop lying. However, the three of us sneered. “Whether you believe it or not, one of us is the murderer.”

The sequel to The Snow Storm tells the story of Owen, the son and brother of the infamous killers at the now well known motel, dubbed the Murder Motel. Owen is just trying to live a normal life, thinking that he has finally managed to put the past behind him, when a new string of disappearances seem to suggest that he is carrying on in his late father's footsteps. But when a copy cat killer goes so far as to frame him for the murders, he needs all the help that he can get to clear his name. That is where journalist Kate Lyston comes in. She believes that he is innocent and works along side of him to prove it. Will they fall in love at the Murder Motel, or will she be it's latest victim?

Murder Inquiry is a crime fiction, whose plot is about Edwin Wolfgang, a rich New York based banker, who gives out loans for which he accepts artworks as collateral, but kills his customers before they are able to pay back the loan. And a FBI agent attached to the New York field office, who's charged with the task of bringing Mr Wolfgang to book. The story is set in three cities, in three different continents, and is full of twists and turns from the killing of Wolfgang's last two victims, up to his eventual arrest.