Wicked Games - Paperback

Jane Lawless has worked hard to make her Minneapolis restaurant a success, and she’s finally reaping the financial rewards. Yet even the demands and excitement of being a popular restaurateur and living the good life rarely bring the same satisfactions they once did. Jane needs a bigger challenge. A mystery to solve. The thrill of the chase…

When Jane rents her third-story apartment to a new tenant, children’s book author Elliot Beauman, she unwittingly opens the door to a sinister, decades-old mystery that has been waiting patiently to unfold in her own house. Meanwhile, Jane assists a detective in tracking down clues about her new neighbor, Patricia, whose husband died mysteriously. Patricia is eager to become friends, or more…even though she knows Jane is immersed in a long-distance relationship with the secretive Dr. Julia Martinsen. Little does Jane know that her new renter, an attractive neighbor, and a volatile love affair are just the beginning of her problems.

Originally published by St. Martin's Press 1998

“Hart adeptly wraps up the puzzles, and she also keeps questions about Jane's private life sufficiently unresolved to lure fans back for the next installment.” –Publishers Weekly
“A mystery-lovers feast!” –Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine
“COMPELLING . . . a novel that is rich in character and weighted with the themes that love has the power to kill as well as heal.” –Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Hart does it again–gives us another winner in her series featuring Jane Lawless, Minneapolis restaurateur and amateur sleuth.” –Booklist (starred review)

• Cordelia - one of our favorite sidekicks!
• A true cozy - long on puzzles and personalities, short on gore.
• Book 8 in the series, though we feel the series can be read out of order and still very much enjoyed.
• The Jane Lawless Mysteries have won five Lambda Literary Awards.
• Read the appetizer! Click to open a PDF in a new window.

 

Lambda Literary Foundation

Wicked Games - Finalist, Best Lesbian Mystery.

Booklist (Starred Review)

How delightful it is to see not only the star of a series, but a secondary player, too, develop subtly yet incisively as genuinely three-dimensional characters—yet another indication of Hart's skill as this jewel of a lesbian series continues to flourish.

The Drood Review of Mystery

Wicked Games is more psychological suspense than the adventure of an amateur sleuth, and it is definitely darker than formerly common to the series. Hart has written a book that feels very close to her heroine's truth.

Minneapolis Star Tribune

Compelling ... a novel that is rich in character and weighted with the theme that love has the power to kill as well as to heal.

About.com

Kelly Caldwell: Gay and Lesbian fiction fans are rewarded with superb writing and a fabulous heroine. Fans of mystery and suspense are likewise rewarded. I highly recommend this novel for fans of both genres.

Lambda Book Report

Lynne Maxwell - December, 1998: In Wicked Games, the eagerly awaited new installment in her Jane Lawless series, Ellen Hart plunges readers into interweaving plot strands involving sins of commission and omission.