Genre: Murder Mystery
Publisher: Tule Publishing
Happy Release Day to The Cul-de-sac by Christopher Null! 🎉🔪
This gripping murder mystery explores the dark secrets lurking behind closed doors in a quiet neighborhood. Enjoy the exclusive excerpt! 👇
Synopsis:
How well do you really know your neighbors?
Klaus Fischer has been murdering women for years, and most of them are buried in his woodsy backyard on a quiet, lonely cul-de-sac in northern California, away from prying eyes. Klaus wants to quit the killing game but is finding it incredibly difficult, and when he finally encounters his neighbor, widow Peg Jurgensen, he decides she’ll be a perfect final victim before he retires for good.
While Klaus circles his prey, the arrival of a new family on the cul-de-sac – the first new residents in years – generates plenty of excitement, particularly from Peg. She’s especially enthused about Eliza, the teenage member of the van Damal clan, who’s trying to make friends in her new school while struggling with math. On a lark, Eliza turns to another neighbor, the troubled Alex, a shut-in who suffers from a mysterious disability, convincing him to become her math tutor.
It isn’t long before it becomes clear that Klaus isn’t the only one on the cul-de-sac with secrets he doesn’t want revealed, but none of that can stop Klaus’s bloodlust from finally boiling over on one fateful night. And that’s when things on the cul-de-sac get really weird.
The closer these misfits become, the more danger even the most ordinary conversations invite. As the body count rises, can these neighbors trust anyone hiding behind their doors on this street?
Excerpt:
CHAPTER I
Klaus
The rain was no help.
While one would think that a little water on the ground would soften things up after the long bake of yet another hot and dry California summer, once it hit the earth, the moisture had no impact whatsoever. The rocky terrain had to be dug out mostly by pickaxe rather than shovel, my tired arms chiseling out boulders as big as my head one by one and then tossing them aside into a crude mound. The rain—a wholly unexpected downpour for this time of year—only made the rocks slippery and more difficult than ever to deal with, especially in the dark.
A shallow grave wasn’t an option. I’d learned that the hard way two years ago. Living on the outskirts of town has its advantages, but teeming wildlife is not one of them. Raccoons will eat anything, and coyotes can smell blood for miles. But the worst are the opossums. The monsters are strong, and their little hands can pick up rocks. Not the really big ones, but they can easily lift stones as big as a softball. They eat anything, but it’s the sheer tenacity that really causes problems. They can undo a full burial mound in the middle of the night, and after a body is exposed to the elements, well, you’ve got a serious problem, not just from the raccoons, coyotes, opossums, rats, and other ungeziefer—er, vermin—but from the flies, wasps, and other bugs swarming around the thing.
I wasn’t keen to relive the experience from the last time around, when on a Tuesday morning I found a carefully dug (though admittedly much too shallow) grave completely unearthed and the fresh corpse of the hausfrau within nearly ripped to shreds. There were bits of red dress scattered for thirty, forty meters, little fragments the raccoons must have finally decided weren’t worth even attempting to eat. I had to cancel my work trip to Texas later that day—a whole other problem—and then spend all afternoon and the night that followed cleaning things up and digging a much deeper grave just to be sure the wildlife couldn’t get to it. Fortunately, the cul-de-sac was dead quiet as usual, and no one asked any questions.
The experience was enough to turn me off of this business for more than a year. Until last night, anyway.
Praise: (from goodreads)
“The Cul-de-sac is one of these enthralling stories where the deeper you dive the more harrowing and crazy it becomes.” – Lori Peterson
“I love and HIGHLY recommend this book to anyone who loves a good thriller.” – Kristen Caldwell
“What a ride! I love this book and could not put it down.” – Katy The Sleepy Reader
Book links:
Goodreads | Amazon.com | Amazon.in | Barnes & Noble
About the author:
Christopher Null is an award-winning writer best known as the founder and editor-in-chief of the websites Filmcritic.com and Drinkhacker. A working journalist and editor for more than two decades, he was the founding editor of Mobile PC Magazine and today regularly contributes to WIRED.
Null’s first novel, Half Mast, arrived in bookstores in 2002 and was heralded as “the best of contemporary American fiction” by the New York Resident. His 2005 book, Five Stars!, a how-to guide for aspiring film critics, is often used as a textbook for film criticism curriculum at a number of colleges and universities. It was reissued in 2013 in its second edition. His latest novel, The Cul-de-sac, arrives in February 2025.
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