Still Waters Run Deep

Ron Goulart's debut collection, Adam and Eve On a Raft: Mystery Stories, follows two advertising industry men with wildly different approaches to the respective murder cases they stumble upon. Scrib Merlin, a copywriter who wants to be a comedian, decodes the strange final words of various murder victims but doesn't necessarily improve his own lot; and the anonymous California Adman, finding he's unable to dissuade some murderous acquaintances from their ghastly business, instead describes their behaviors. (Crippen & Landru, $17 214p ISBN 1-885941-58-7) Jessica Parkerson, wife of a prominent Malibu defense lawyer, receives several threatening anonymous phone calls, precursors to terrifying acts of vengeance perpetrated by an embittered, twisted man. The lives of Jessica, her husband and their friends are upended and endangered in the psychological thriller Still Waters Run Deep, Wendy DeVere-Austin's first book.