When the Wasp Stings: A Cooper North Mystery

By Richard Wolkomir

Prosecutor Cooper North knows better-this town only seems cursed.

She's seen it before: evil festering in someone's mind finally erupts, a geyser of malice. It shakes the community, and bewilders it.

Past injustices rise like zombies to haunt the present. There are attacks in the night. It truly does seem demonic.

And then come the murders.

It begins quietly, with a visitor to Cooper North's office. He's a short man, balding, diffident, a little plump. He says he's come to report a homicide.

Is it really murder, though? A maple-syrup entrepreneur dead of allergic shock? Because of yellow-jacket wasps in his sleeves?

Then bizarre incidents multiply, like portents-a thousand miles north of the subtropics, an alligator waddles along this Vermont town's Main Street, scaring shoppers. Thieves steal maple logs, but they're mystifyingly inept. Sadists attack the town's pets, viciously. Why?

Then, it turns truly savage.

Who are those knife-wielding psychopaths costumed as Ninjas, terrifying the town and targeting people close to Cooper North?

Cooper herself is this story's heart.

She's a recovering scotch addict, graying, walks with a cane. Yet, no one sees deeper. She just retired, but now she's pulled back into the prosecutor's office because the community is under siege, and she's indispensable-her relentlessness is formidable. It is scarred, rooted in pain. It is human.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0CMJB916Q
• ISBN13: 9798989281817
• Release Date: December 2023
• Publisher: Worcester Range Books
• Length: 452 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.0" x 9.0"