PW #411: Adult Mystery: THE EMERALD EYE

Manuscript Status:  Completed

Mentor Name: Max Wirestone
Mentee Name: Anne Lipton
Title: THE EMERALD EYE
Category: Adult
Genre: Mystery
Word Count: 87,000

Pitch:

Colt Ryder is a “Stephanie Plum with a Stetson” who must partner with a charming Dublin archivist to find the Irish Crown Jewels. Southern heat meets Celtic cool as the IRA hunts them down. But Colt reckons it’d kill her to trust the guy. The IRA is happy to oblige.

Excerpt:

Colt Rose Ryder was fixin’ to lose an eye. And the fascinator she wore was not going to help.

At least Win had outfitted her ridiculous flying-saucer-shaped headgear with a camera, mic, and receiver. She should ask him to upgrade her Stetson.

While other security personnel slunk darkly in the shade of the English Field Maples foresting the nave of Westminster Abbey, Colt ventured out to the Royal Wedding as bright as a bluebonnet. As a redhead from bleached-blond Texas, she was used to standing out. She just didn’t cotton to standing still.

Peering under the brim of what passed for a hat in these parts, Colt scanned the guests penned in wooden pews, the women in jewel-toned designer duds outsparkling the men in stony suits. Rainmakers, royalty, and rock stars. Not bad for her first rodeo.

Those 25-foot-tall trees hadn’t been rolled in for show, however. The sturdy maples could be knocked down into horizontal beam barriers—although not for her. If anyone sprung an ambush, she’d be greeting ’em at the door.

Someday, Colt might walk down the aisle rather than sweeping the perimeter. But this assignment had fenced in any fairytale tomfoolery: No prince for her. Not that she needed one.

Colt rested her thumb in the crevasse where her ring finger met her palm. She and Travis had almost gotten hitched. Before he got all persnickety about her riding out for work.

For now, she was wed to the job: Always a bodyguard, never a bride.