[Max Starr Series 03] • Desperate to the Max

Thirty-something, down-on-her-luck accountant Max Starr has the unfortunate gift of being psychic, a newly-discovered wrinkle in her already messed-up life. Her husband, Cameron, is dead, killed in a botched 7-11 robbery two years ago. In her grief, Max has cut herself off from friends, moved out of her San Francisco home in favor of a studio apartment, and dumped her flourishing career as a CPA to do temp work.

Now Max has developed an annoying penchant for attracting the spirits of murdered women. Okay, they possess her. And to exorcize them, Max must unmask their killers. But how?! By stepping into the void their deaths created, taking their jobs, befriending the loved ones they left behind. Max goes wherever she has to go and does whatever she has to do.

In Max’s latest adventure: By day, poor pitiful Bethany Spring runs a courier service for housebound people; by night, she becomes the seductive Helen on the other end of the phone line and men will pay anything to talk to her. When Bethany is murdered, the brutal slaying plunges Max into the woman’s kinky after-midnight world. Barely surviving this crash course in Phone Sex 101, Max turns once again to her late husband Cameron and hunky Detective Witt Long to help her crack the case.

Needing Witt for his detecting skills is one thing, but meeting his mother is scarier than facing down a cold-blooded killer. What commitment is the irresistible detective going to extract from her next? Max almost prefers being possessed by a spirit.

[Previously published in 2004]

*** Warning: contains explicit material ***