Twisted Minds, Special Crimes Team, is now live on Kindle and coming soon as paperback on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/Twisted-Minds-Special-Crimes-Team-ebook/dp/B074DT74HY

This was a particularly challenging novel to write as the concept first appeared in the winter of 2015. In the spring of 2016, I began the first draft. As the presidential elections heated up, I completed the first draft. With one candidate using hate and open verbal attacks on minorities as his platform, minority communities experienced an upsurge in violence against them.

As a member of a minority community, I found this of personal concern as well as concern for my country. Since that time, my concern has not abated; however, as Sergeant Slowater in Twisted Minds discovers, there is more behind the attacks on minorities than simple hate.

In both my novel and in reality, hate is used to stir up the emotions of a certain segment of the  population to create a groundswell of anger and violence against certain communities in order to distract from the real crimes being committed by the puppeteer orchestrating the rhetoric of hate. In others words, by using hate and religious rhetoric, a central figure creates emotions in certain followers that manifest in violent actions. In the public’s attempt to deal with the violence and other manifestations of hate, the real central issue is obscured.

In most criminal activity, there are certain motivations that appear to hold true over a large crime spectrum. Those motivations are: greed, hate, love, power. Love is normally found in crimes of passion and in revenge crimes, as is hate. Most crimes are based on a hunger for material gain and power over others. These two appear to be conjoined as money does translate to power in our society.

Sergeant Slowater must decide whether these crimes are truly crimes of hate or if there is a dark logic behind them. She must follow a trail of logic, created by twisted minds, to stop the attacks on minority women.

Hate destroys. We see it in novels; we see it in real life. It destroys families, communities, and even the fabric of our nation which has thrived on diversity. Hate destroys the credibility of any religion that wields it; yet, all too frequently, religion is the banner beneath which terrible crimes are committed. In Twisted Minds, Sergeant Slowater and the Special Crimes Team confront that destruction.

Though we may not be Sergeant Slowater, each of us can stand against hate in our society. We must remind each other that not only is diversity good for our country, but diversity is the signature of Creator.