Our deepest gratitude goes to Tom Mitchell, Rita Mitchell, and Rutka Messinger; to our agent and fairy godmother, Jessica Papin of Dystel, Goderich & Bourret; and to John Glynn, Peter Joseph, Roxanne Jones, Cathy Joyce, Grace Towery, Eden Church, Sean Kapitain, Sandra Noakes, and the entire crew at Hanover Square Press and Harlequin Books, and aboard the mothership at HarperCollins. Without Catherine Ehr at the helm of PathologyExpert, none of our books would be written.
Many thanks to our invaluable early readers: Howard Baum, PhD, Mairead Devlin, Dr. Jonathan Finks, Susan Lindsay, Ewelina Mistek-Morabito, PhD, Asit Panwalla, George Reed, Sarah Lansdale Stevenson, Dr. Tom Tremoulet, and Judith Michelle Williams, PhD. The Beta Queen is Cristin Pescosolido, who answered more petty questions in the crafting of this work than anyone should ever have to, and who did so with intelligence, good cheer, and as much kindness as she could muster.
Additional thanks to Ron Santoro, CFX, Mary Lou McSolla, Mary Roach, Karen Lynch, Sparkle Kelly, Sheila Averbuch, Ted Nguyen, Andrew Gould, Stephen Manton-Kelly, and José Quinteiro; Faith Salie and Strand Bookstore for the fabulous launch; Mary Jo Mitchell Angersbach and Stephani Finks for design advice; Paige Kaneb, Laurel Thompson, and Rebecca Young for legal lingo; Inspector Brian Delahunty and Officer Francisco Morrow for police procedure; Rhonda Roby, PhD, for DNA science; Kelly Gould for makeup and style advice; Liam Ford and Ann Weiler for parsing the stylebook; Green Apple Books and Book Passage Corte Madera for unflagging West Coast support; Liz Hopper Whitelam of Whitelam Books and the Nahant Public Library and Town Hall for heartwarming hometown support; and Amal Bisharat for our photos and also yoga.
Mary Jo, Kristen, and Michael have been patient with one of the authors for a great many years. Dina, Leah, Daniel, and Anna have put up with everything from both of them and have given in return their love and support. Without that, we couldn’t do a single thing.
This book is offered in memory of T.J.’s mentor, John Richard Briley.