The Trouble With Vivienne: A Jack Mercer Mystery

Los Angeles, 1957. The heat's bad enough to melt discretion clean off the map - and then summer walks into Jack Mercer's office wearing silk.Private investigator Jack Mercer has seen every kind of trouble come through his frosted-glass door, but nothing prepares him for Vivienne Laurent - Hollywood's newest luminous star - sliding into his client chair and asking him to find her stolen diamonds. No police. No explanations. Just cash, composure, and a story with far too many locked doors.Mercer takes the case because a man in his line of work doesn't turn down money - and because he's already lost the argument with himself about Vivienne's pale eyes and dangerous mouth. But the deeper he digs through blackmail, studio secrets, and the kind of men who own a city without ever showing their faces, the clearer it gets: the diamonds were never the real secret. Vivienne is.Between smoke-filled offices, a gangster's bullets, and a bed neither of them meant to end up in, Mercer has to decide how far he's willing to fall for a woman built out of beautiful lies - and whether she's worth the wreckage she'll leave behind.The Trouble with Vivienne is a scorching, noir-soaked, pulp-style dark romance from Kestral Rook - for readers who like their heroes hard-boiled, their heroines dangerous, and their happy endings a little singed around the edges.