Termination Interview
Lynne Murray

1988 | St Martin's Press | 275 pp | Hardcover First Edition | Autographed by Author

Originally $16.95—FREE with purchase of the trade paperback of Lynne Murray's novel Bride of the Living Dead and any other Pearlsong Press trade paperback. (How about Lynne's newest novel, The Falstaff Vampire Files, or her Josephine Fuller mystery novels Larger Than Death and Large Target?) We will also include with your purchase a 12-page booklet containing Lynne's essay "The Road to Life-Sized Fiction."

Only 44 copies of Termination Interview are available! This special offer ends when all 44 copies of Termination Interview have been given away.

Aspiring photographer Ingrid Hunter takes a dead-end temp job to survive, but she never expected dying to be part of the job description.

The much-loathed personnel director at the posh San Francisco law firm turns out to be Ingrid's former high school classmate, Miranda Falk. Ingrid didn't like her then and likes her even less now, when Miranda starts pressuring her to run some unsavory errands.

Soon after Ingrid arrives at the job, Miranda exits through her 12th floor windows, falling to her death in the alley below.

Murder or suicide? Corruption, arson, blackmail and Ingrid's own dark past are left in the wake of Miranda's death as Ingrid races to bring the killer into focus—before she's too dead to do the job.

From the back cover

The spilled coffee and abandoned phone made her uneasy.

"Ingrid?" Pammy was holding Miranda's telephone receiver out and staring at it in puzzlement. "Listen to this."

"What is it?" Ingrid returned to Pammy's side. For some reason, she hesitated to touch the receiver, but as she came close, she could hear the precise, ladylike monologue that issued from it: "The time is two thirteen exactly. Beep. The time is two thirteen and ten seconds. Beep. The time is two thirteen and twenty seconds. Beep."

The only other sound in the room was the rattle of the venetian blind in the wind. Ingrid shook her head at the time lady's voice and went to close the window.

She glanced down as she leaned gingerly out over the knee-level sill. A dozen floors down in Taft Alley something colorful rose up for a second in an updraft of wind. A speckling of rain made Ingrid blink. She saw the crumpled figure in the alley below the fire escape. That flutter must be her red designer scarf.