Crime Cafe

Debbi Mack reads Chapter 1 of her New York Times bestselling hardboiled mystery, Identity Crisis, on the Crime Cafe podcast. Please consider lending support to the Crime Cafe podcast on Patreon. The text is below! CHAPTER ONE I’ve never been a morning person, and if there’s one thing I don’t need before my first cup of coffee, it’s a visit from the cops. But at 8:45 on a Friday morning, two of them waited for me at my law office. I shut the door on the steam heat—typical July weather in Maryland—and shook my sticky blouse loose. Seven years in practice had taught me many hard lessons. One of them should have been never to wear dry-clean-only blouses in the summer. Sheila, the seventy-plus receptionist and secretary for the accounting firm where I sublet space, gave me a brief wave while answering the phone through her ever-present headset. Her long, bony fingers clacked away at the keyboard without skipping a beat. Both men stood as I approached. I recognized Detective Martin Derry of the Prince George