Bless Me Father

This is a tantalizing mystery driven by friendships and secrets. Maria-Teresa Rivera has no idea what’s in store for her when she arrives at her childhood church in Mesa, Arizona for a routine planning meeting with the hot new priest. The effect the handsome Brazilian priest has on the congregation of the St. Francis de Sales Catholic church is nothing less than murderous.

When a dead body is discovered at the church, Maria-Teresa fails to convince the police that, despite her blood-smeared appearance, she is innocent of the crime. As the body count rises in the church community, Maria-Teresa’s tenacious trio of multiracial girlfriends embark on a thrilling cat and mouse chase with a killer using wit, wisdom, and humor to absolve their friend of murder charges.

Through shudder-inducing twists and turns, these amateur sleuths uncover deep dark secrets about a plethora of suspicious characters. These ladies combine who-dun-it foundations with a contemporary empowering driven approach to crime solving only to leave one secret yet to be revealed.

Mary McKenzie

On a rainy Seattle night, beautiful and vivacious local author Mary McKenzie is celebrating her latest triumph of a best-selling book with friends and family at a local bar, when a phone call sends her into the alley to a destiny with a man who brutally changes her life forever.

As Mary returns to her life in the public eye, she begins a fast-paced race to discover who is trying to make a mess of her life.

Suffering panic attacks that have controlled her since the attack, Mary begins to try to continue her life. Aided by her loving and protective brother and Danish blond goddess Hege, her head of security, Mary is better protected than the President.

The cast of characters from her past and present includes the intelligent and sensual FBI Profiler, Michael Gryffin, who causes Mary to take a different kind of fall.

From the San Juan Islands to beautiful Pike Place Market, they are pursued by a mystery man who threatens her very life. When Mary finally thinks she is safe, the panic is just beginning.

Murder and the Fairchild Legacy

When billionaire Houston socialite Richard Fairchild is found dead under suspicious circumstances, his wife Mariah refuses to accept the police verdict of suicide. Desperate for answers, she recruits small-town radio owners Delilah Morgan and Norma Davis to investigate. She offers the struggling entrepreneurs compensation they can’t refuse – $20,000 each, a bailout for their failing station, and an all-expenses paid trip to Mariah’s Hill Country resort.

At first reluctant, Delilah and Norma soon find themselves embroiled in the glitzy Houston elite circles the Fairchilds inhabited. With a list of suspects who had motive to kill Richard, the duo follow a trail of lies, affairs, and shady business deals. The stakes grow ever higher as it becomes clear the Fairchild legacy – and their own lives – are in danger. From Texas hill country horse ranches to slick Houston high-rises, Delilah and Norma uncover adultery, blackmail, rivalry… and murder. But will the radio sleuths solve the mystery before the killer silences them too?

Murder in Sweet Water Springs

It is the summer of 1960. Sweet Water Springs is a small upstate town that had known better times. Herb Wyman has come home to be the town’s sheriff after having been dismissed from the city detective squad. Early each morning, Sheriff Wyman mounts his vintage Indian motorcycle to patrol the law-abiding village of his childhood. His job is to keep his town safe and secure from the outside world.

A flashy Buick LeSabre owned by the town’s banker had been recovered from the bottom of Moosehead Lake. The bodies of two local teenagers are dead in the car. There has been a murder in Sweet Water Springs that threatens the peace of the village. Has a personal tragedy fallen on star-crossed lovers, or is there something evil and more sinister creeping into the small town? It’s up to Sheriff Wyman to find the clues and solve the crime.

Murder in Sweet Water Springs is a wholesome, classic mystery set in a place and time when life was believed to be simple. The story is filled with engaging characters and humor. The reader is drawn to follow the sheriff’s investigation and peel away the layers of evidence to solve the mystery.

Murders in the Cascades

During a lucid moment, an Alzheimer’s patient tells amateur sleuth Biodina d’Angelo that 40 years ago he killed his lumberyard partner in the Cascades of Washington state. Biodina begins searching historical records, and a clever fraud scheme is uncovered, along with news articles about a missing lumberyard owner. Along the way, her intuitive nature and nosiness helps her uncover another murder of a well-respected record producer. Will the murderess be a starstruck performer, a jealous wife, or a vindictive assistant?

The Mysterious Affair at the Met

A favorite destination—even for New Yorkers—is the venerable Metropolitan Museum of Art. On this particular day, “the Met,” as generally known, experiences an unusually large number of visitors. Visitors have their choice of viewing over two million works of art spanning five millennia of cultures worldwide. But some among them are up to something more sinister.

At one point, the Met’s surveillance cameras’ lenses capture “a mysterious-looking couple” amid the many visitors strolling about the many galleries. The pair is dripping wet in their matching taupe Burberry trench coats. Just as the two of them walk past Soleil dans le Ciel de Saint-Paul, a masterpiece of Marc Chagall, a large tourist group—who, oddly enough, all are wearing distinctive red-and-white-striped vinyl raincoats—converges around them. But it is what happens next that baffles the museum’s surveillance crew. After “the mysterious-looking couple” pulls off their prank, they and the large tourist group walk out of that particular camera’s range, becoming submerged elsewhere in the interminable galleries of the gigantic museum.

But when a docent notices “something strange” with Chagall’s Soleil dans le Ciel de Saint-Paul, in short order, the museum-goers inside the Chagall gallery hear “High Alert!” and watch in horror as a heavy metal grille drops down from the ceiling to the floor, effectively locking them inside the gallery.

And thus began what later came to be called The Mysterious Affair at the Met.

What Death Revealed

In a tale that spans two disparate worlds within one city, this gripping novel dives deep into the divide between the glistening capital of the Free World and its neglected districts, home to 700,000 citizens mostly of color. Eight years after the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. sparked riots that shattered the city’s core, the scars of racial fury and systemic injustice remain as evident as ever.

Amid this backdrop of crime and burnt-out neighborhoods, Jimmy McFarland, an earnest young District Attorney, stumbles upon evidence of corruption tied to a six-billion-dollar Metro subway project aimed at reconnecting the city’s fractured communities. Though clearly a matter for the FBI, McFarland embarks on a rogue investigation. In doing so, he crosses paths with Larry Williams, a black police sergeant whose rough exterior belies his own complicated relationship with justice and morality.

Walking a precarious line between courage and recklessness, McFarland and Williams form an uneasy alliance. Fueled by McFarland’s idealistic pursuit of justice and Williams’ pragmatic understanding of its rarity, the duo confronts a daunting array of racism, corruption, and murder. As they untangle a web of powerful players who thought they were untouchable, the question remains: Can they navigate the system’s deep-rooted flaws to achieve some measure of justice?

“With characters that you won’t forget, an important story that keeps pages turning fast, and gritty detail that says the author knows whereof he writes, Lash’s novel is definitely not to be missed. If he can tell a tale this good, it is a mystery why he was spending time running a premier environmental organization and being an innovative college president. First rate.”
– Gus Speth, author of Let Your Tears Water the Earth and other books.

“Jonathan Lash has given us a perfectly written, perfectly paced, and completely absorbing inside view of how prosecutors and police actually solve crimes, all set in the turbulent days in Washington following Martin Luther King’s assassination and Nixon’s downfall.  Lash’s tale is one of justice triumphant against great political odds, a message that many a reader will welcome today.”
– Gary Milhollin, President, Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control.

“What a great read! Jonathan Lash uses his background as a white prosecutor in Chocolate City (Washington, DC) to weave an engrossing tale of murder, corruptions, racial conflict, and love. The Black DC cop and white AUSA who are the story’s principal heroes will stay with you, and those familiar with DC will find a bonus in the varied references to landmark shops, restaurants, and venues in the District.”
– Florence Wagman Roisman, William F. Harvey Professor of Law at Indiana University.