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Suicide Squeeze (Diamond Mystery Book) by TG Wolff ➱ Release Tour with Giveaway

 



Suicide Squeeze
Diamond Mystery Book 2
by TG Wolff
Genre: Mystery



Diamond. One name for a woman with one purpose. Or she was, until she finished her to-do list. Now she’s just a woman ready to be over with it all.

Hanna Lang is the kind of woman men write bad checks for. She has a problem. Her man, Dr. Damon Marten, disappeared in the middle of an ordinary day. The police aren’t concerned but Hanna knows better. A clandestine meeting leaves her with an address, a sealed envelope, and one last hope. An hour later, she rings a doorbell.

Before Diamond was a widow, she was CIA agent with skills illegal in a dozen countries. When her marker is called in, she has no choice but to listen. It’s just like fate throw her a curve ball, sending her the one problem she can’t walk away from. Hanna’s situation is virtually identical to her own with one exception: Hanna’s man might still be alive.

Diamond reluctantly takes the case. She dives into the mystery, surfacing in the middle of a scavenger hunt for a secret known as Poe’s Raven. It takes Diamond’s flair for the impossible to capture this bird, only to discover what’s in her hand has the potential to take terrorism to a chilling new level. And fate isn’t done with Diamond, forcing her to put it all on the line or risk setting the caged bird free.


Praise for the books by TG Wolff:

TG Wolff’s Detective De La Cruz is caught in the crosshairs of solving heinous crimes, defending himself against a wrongful lawsuit, helping an abusive drug dealer’s family, thwarting his mother’s matchmaking, and falling in love. Pit against those who subvert justice and twist the law to suit their own ends, Cruz stands true while suffering his own demons—everything a hero should be. Wolff’s unsentimental and precise writing draws readers. Add Exacting Justice to your ‘to be read’ pile.” 
—E. B. Davis, mystery author

Working with an incarcerated population, I deal regularly with people who have made poor life decisions but who can be inherently funny, surprisingly talented, or overly concerned. I know that simple labels of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ don't work in the real world. In Exacting Justice, TG Wolff created characters just as messy, complicated, and dynamic as real life that keep you wanting to read page after page.” —Vincent Giammarco, Director of Behavioral Health Care






Widow's Run
Diamond Mystery Book 1


One night in Rome. One car. One dead scientist. Italian police investigate, but in the end, all they have are kind words for the new widow. Months later, a video emerges challenging the facts. Had he stepped into traffic, or was he pushed? The widow returns to the police, but they have little interest and no answers. Exit the widow.

Enter Diamond. One name for a woman with one purpose. Resurrecting her CIA cover, she follows the shaky video down the rabbit hole. Her widow’s run unearths a plethora of suspects: the small-time crook, the mule-loving rancher, the lady in waiting, the Russian bookseller, the soon-to-be priest.
 Following the stink greed leaves in its wake reveals big lies and ugly truths.

Murder is filthy business. Good thing Diamond plays dirty.


Praise for WIDOW’S RUN:

Tina Wolff’s novel is for crime-fiction fans who like it action-packed and hard-edged. Written with feisty panache, it introduces Diamond, one of the most aggressive, ill-tempered, and wholly irresistible heroines to ever swagger across the page.” —David Housewright, Edgar Award-winning author of Dead Man’s Mistress



Widow's Run Excerpt
They buried me today and I had the balls to show up. Here I was, on a sunny day in May, shaking my head along with a hundred other people, wondering how someone so young and vibrant could—poof—be gone. I hid in plain sight, loitering on the edge of the crowd. A shit-brown wig in place of my usual chemical blond, matching contacts to camouflage my signature green eyes, and sunglasses plucked from the seventies ensured my face wouldn’t catch the attention of the masses. A theater-quality padded suit added forty pounds to my athletic frame and clothes I wouldn’t be caught dead in completed the illusion. The people who claimed to be closest to me would see what I wanted them to see, another mourner, lamenting the waste of a good life. 
Sunny day in May—yeah, I’ve always had trouble with funerals being on sunny days. I firmly believe in mourning and expect nature to get on board with it. A funeral wasn’t a funeral if the day wasn’t gray with clouds so heavy water leaked like tears. Any temperature that didn’t chill through skin and muscle down to the bone was an affront to the guest of honor. Stark silence needed to be center stage, the absence of natural sound, the absence of life, then fill it with the guttural cry of a bagpipe. 
That’s what I call a funeral. 
Yeah…that’s not what I got. I got the Disney version. 

Excerpt #1 Death by Selfie Stick
“You’re mine, bitch.”
“In your dreams, loverboy.” I snatched a thin, metal wand from a retreating woman, holding it overhead as Tall, Blond, and Obvious bore down at me. The selfie stick bent, the plastic end snapped off, giving me up without so much as a sorry. Still, it was enough to deflect the blow and give me the moment I needed to retaliate. I pressed forward, creating space to work. He had the advantages of height, weight, and reach.
Me? I was meaner.
He came at me again, telegraphing his over-the-shoulder swing. I blocked it and buried the jagged edge of the selfie stick in his soft belly. He shouted in surprise as much as pain, his weight coming down over me. With a lowered shoulder, I let his momentum take me back. Then I used it against him, lifting him enough that gravity carried him over the short wall behind me.
The crowd screamed.
The body landed.
Game over.
I looked over the wall. TBO’s body laid across the headstones of a small cemetery, the selfie stick protruding from his belly, his neck broken. And he was still wearing Bennie’s backpack.
I hope she didn’t have anything illegal in it.
I turned back to the crowd. Dozens of wide eyes stared with a mix of intrigue and horror, waiting to see what I would do next. I swiped another selfie stick, broke it over my knee, and tossed it at the owner’s feet. “No selfie sticks!”
Whistles cut through the crowd’s murmurs. The calvary was coming. What felt like forever was only a few minutes. “Get Hanna to a bench before she passes out.” Some people just don’t have the constitution for the messy parts of this business. Uniformed guards flooded the area. Looked like I was going to find out how good the cover Ian created was.
“On your knees. Hands where I can see them.”
Yeah, like I hadn’t heard that line before.


Excerpt #2 Better than a hero’s welcome

“Not her. She’s one of the good guys.” Bennie had an ice pack pressed to her head and her own Scottish escorts at either elbow. The two guards led her to the front of our little scene. “She went after the man who attacked me and stole my bag.” The blue-haired pixie came to my defense, towering over me as I knelt on the cobblestones.
“She saved my life.” The former hostage pushed away from her daughter to wrap a claiming arm around my shoulder. Her chin was up, challenging authority. “She’s a hero.”
Yeah, I liked the way that sounded.
“A hero, is she?” The guy with the disbelieving intonation wore a name tag that read J. Stewart and a mustache worthy of a hall of fame.
“She pinned that animal to the ground until I could pull my mother away. She’s more than a hero,” the daughter said, “she’s a…she’s a..”
Wait for it…
“…a heroine.”
Ah. Well. I could work with that. Yeah. I could work with that. A hero elevated to the ineth-degree.

Excerpt #3 In Italy, it’s cannoli. In the highlands…
Finally, Irish appeared. He prowled down the street like he’d chew up and spit out any car stupid enough to get in his way.
“And that’s when I shot the lying dog!” My companion roared with laughter. I joined in, changing my pitch. His laughter subsided. He used his napkin to mop up his tears. “Me wife nearly killed me. Turns out, she was fond of that particular brother. Speaking of brothers…”
His monologue provided the perfect cover. He was loud and brash and everyone looked our way. Irish saw me, but then he didn’t see me. He saw a couple when he was hunting a single. Once Irish gave up on us, I went into the restaurant, using the bathroom to shed my wig and my plus-one. I stepped into the evening sun to find Irish planted in the middle of the sidewalk, staring intently across the canal.
This was one of those moments that made for an awesome line. I had five steps to figure one out.
What’s a guy like you doing in a nice town like this? No. Boring.
Leave the haggis, take the cannoli. Uh-huh.
I poked my fingers in his back, “Hand over the cookies and nobody gets hurt.”
He spun, capturing my wrist in his free hand with a hard slap, holding my fingers safely away from his body.
I smiled into his pissed-off blue eyes. “It’s alright. They’re not loaded.”

Excerpt #4 Babble Subscription
The man in the middle cleared the doorway and began swearing. When I sound like that, I’m swearing, but as it was in German again, I may be making an ass out of you and me. He crossed the room quickly, going to one knee next to Hanna. He peeled the tape from Hanna’s mouth. His manner was gentle, his tone aggressive. Leo’s name was prominent in the rant. Allow me to interpret by inference. “What the fuck, Leo? You’re an asshole for tying up my sister and cutting off all her goldilocks.” One of the men handed him scissors, and Hanna was free.
“Hanna’s a bitch,” Leo said, emphatically pointing to said bitch. “Tying her up was the only way to stop her traitorous ways.”
Hanna surged to her feet, rubbing her wrists. “You are a toad, Leo, a first-class douche bag and cut-rate mastermind. Karl, you could find a better number two recruiting from the International Association of Passivists.”
Leo stepped in front of Karl. He and Hanna were going at it, shouting so fast I couldn’t keep up the translation. They were pointing, wildly gesticulating, doing everything short of touching each other.
Karl looked like he had a migraine. He was trapped between the two, metaphorically speaking, hand to the bridge of his nose. Under six foot, Karl was solidly built, especially around the beltline. For a man who built his reputation blowing up soft targets, he didn’t have a big stage presence. He looked like a banker, a businessman.
Him I could work with.
“English!” The noise stopped as though a switch had been pressed. “As entertaining as this is, it’s losing something in translation.” I trained the gun on one of the packages of fresh meat. The one on the left looked like he had a hair-trigger. “Keep them holstered.”
Karl glanced to the men standing around him. With a small wave of his hand, they subsided. “I am Karl Becker. You are?”
“Diamond. It’s about time you showed up. I was beginning to wonder if we were going to wrap up this party without meeting the guest of honor.”




Where were you born/grew up at?

I am a born and bred city kid from Cleveland, Ohio. The city of. I’m not from the suburbs, and Cleveland has plenty of them. I spent the first 24 years of my life with a 44102 zip code. I started attending Cleveland Public Schools just before a Federal judge ordered the school busing. After that, I attended Catholic elementary and high schools. I earned my bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering from Case Western Reserve University and my master’s degree in Civil Engineer from Cleveland State University. I love being from Cleveland. I had to move away to realize how much the city had given to me and shaped me into a woman confident enough to wear the hats of both Professional Engineer and Published Author. No matter how old I get and where I travel to, Cleveland will always be home.

 

How to find time to write as a parent?

My writing process has three distinct parts. Imagining. Writing. Editing. Imaging is the fun part and can be done almost anywhere. I work full time and am married with two boys. If life is so hectic that I (literally) can’t rub two thoughts together, I go for a walk or a swim or a drive. Alone.

 

I began writing in the few hours each night between when the kids went to bed and when I did. I didn’t write every night, because I had to imagine before I could write. Using this method, romances would take 3-4 months to write and mysteries 4-6 months to write. It might sound like a long time, but it didn’t feel that way.

 

Editing was more challenging because I had to sit still and just do it. I did some after the kids went to bed but often had to just set aside the time during the weekend.

 

As my kids have gotten older, it’s become easier to find the time. (My teens hardly acknowledge my presence after dinner is finished.) Now I find that writing can be a way to engage them. Both of my boys are willing to jump into my imagination to help me figure out a plot element. My 17-year-old, Jack, taught me the word Defenestration, which is featured prominently in the coup de gras of my newest title, Suicide Squeeze. My 14-year-old, Viktor, helped me figure out the character and body positioning of that same scene. It’s fun to watch their eyes as imagination takes over. They have good ideas and strong opinions on characters and their actions.

 

Which of your novels can you imagine made into a movie?

Thinking specifically of movies, I think my romantic suspense series titles Lost in Tennessee, Lost in Shadows, and Lost in Deception (written as Anita DeVito) are readily adaptable. Each has a strong leading man and woman, a tantalizing romantic line, and a well-crafted mystery. They can be scaled down to a 90-minute format while retaining enough of the humor to keep it all fun.

 

Thinking of more of a Netflix, HBO style format, the Diamond Mystery series is a natural. The first book, Widow’s Run, and my current release, Suicide Squeeze, both feature a core of four dynamic characters that is common in this style of storytelling, with great minor characters that go in, make a splash, and then go out again. Unique to this series, each chapter has its own storyline while progressing the overall story along. Every chapter matters. Something is always going on…and it’s usually going wrong.

 

Now for my De La Cruz Casefile series, I have to say that the novel is the right format. These are more detailed mysteries with the “everyday” backstories of the characters woven in. A movie wouldn’t spend the time to do it justice. A television series would leave a lot on the cutting room floor or have some very tame episodes where the major plot is being advanced. There are times when you just can’t beat a book.

 



I am TG Wolff, a native of Cleveland, Ohio, born shortly after the river burned. I have always loved puzzles. It doesn't matter if the puzzles are made of words, numbers, or pictures. I'm not a cop or a lawyer, I'm an engineer. My stories aren't police procedurals or legal thrillers, they are mysteries designed to be solved. My stories are about the plot, the puzzle, and the fun twist of humor that makes life entertaining.





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Comments

  1. Thanks for letting me and Diamond stop by. I love playing in the wonderful world of words.

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