Beyond Dark - a crime fiction series
Veteran criminal psychologist, Agent Alyssa Rawkesby, has spent her career studying, chasing and arresting the most prolific female serial killers around the world. She delves into the terrifying minds of women who kill, minds that, sometimes, are too similar to her own. They are mothers, daughters, grandmothers and they seem perfectly normal. But as the daughter of two narcissists, Alyssa knows from experience that flawless exteriors can be pure illusion. Sometimes what lurks behind the curtain of eloquence and perfection is most horrifying of all.
As she struggles with her own mental disorder and past, she is assigned a new partner – Agent Thayer Volikov. A charismatic Russian tech analyst bursting with empathy and compassion Alyssa lacks. Thayer brings his own questionable past into the picture, slowly brought to light. Thayer must learn how to understand and work with someone so damaged, she has disconnected from the world, while Alyssa finds herself in a position she never thought she’d be: a mentor.
Can they learn to work together? Will Thayer’s sharp, empathetic ways become a tool to not only becoming a brilliant profiler, but to understanding his new partner? And will Alyssa shatter her glass house of isolation and pain with the hope of friendship, both old and new?
Step into the darkness to find the light. Discover what lingers in the depths of humanity we never see. Discover what lurks… beyond darkness.
1: Belladonna
Agent Alyssa Rawkesby never thought she'd relate so strongly to a serial killer's letter. But the moment she reads it, she knows there is no going back - she must find the notorious Belladonna Killer, even if it breaks the mental stability she spent seven years repairing. Women in Ottawa, Ontario are being poisoned to death and left posed with a bizarre signature. The grief and fear is filtering through the entertainment industry over a shadow slipping death into drinks.
As an expert in female serial killers, and a veteran criminal psychologist, Alyssa never before encountered a case like this. Is Belladonna a sadistic monster, or a victim of something sinister Alyssa is too familiar with? She fears looking Belladonna in the eye will be like looking at her own reflection - or that of someone she cut from her life a long time ago. But time is running out to save other women. She gets assigned a new, rookie partner, and she tries not to unravel as lines blur between what the killer truly is and the pieces of her own past.
"I know how it feels to live with crippling insecurity behind a mask of false ego and confidence. I only want to connect to a world I feel so detached from. To connect with something, anything to feel normal." - Alyssa
The trailer:
2: Gravedigger (coming soon)
“What is the antidote to poisonous behaviors when you want to cleanse yourself of being that person?”
Secrets. A town, isolated on the prairies, bursting at the seams with secrets and brewing hostility. Affairs, broken families and eight missing women over the span of ten years. When a woman digs herself from her own grave, local cops call in the best profiler for chasing down a female serial killer: Agent Alyssa Rawkesby. With her rookie partner still in tow, she and Thayer delve into the demented mind of a woman hell-bent on revenge by burying her victims alive while digging through small town secrets to decipher which will lead to the killer and which simply tear marriages and families apart. Alyssa continues to battle old demons as she and Thayer learn to work together.
The town has never seen anything like this, but Alyssa has. Sex and jealousy are motives as old as time, but is that what these murders are truly about? What simmers beneath the surface of the picturesque illusion of bliss and traditional values? How is this killer hiding in plain sight among the same women she kills? How close to home is she, really?
