The Crushing

 

 

THE CRUSHING

by Kerry Peresta

October 21 - November 15, 2024 Virtual Book Tour

 

 

Synopsis:

OLIVIA CALLAHAN SUSPENSE

The victim of a vicious assault six years ago that resulted in a traumatic brain injury, Olivia Callahan is now a private investigator with her own firm. The assault that almost took her life resulted in a spectacular metamorphosis. No longer the shy, passive introvert she once was, she’s become a driving and determined force. However, the lack of impulse control caused by her rewired brain causes her to run toward trouble instead of away from it.

When Olivia sends her colleague, Sherry, to the Florida panhandle to find a missing friend, Hannah; the search takes Sherry into the dark heart of an abusive, hostage situation. The man Hannah married is cruel, dangerous, and well-connected. Olivia reels in her favorite cop—Sergeant Hunter Faraday—for a discreet assist, and it soon becomes clear that Hannah’s new husband is adept at waging war against anything that blocks his way.

While rescuing Hannah is Olivia’s primary goal, her incarcerated ex-husband has other plans. He’s collected friends who support his obsessive need to punish her for her role in his murder conviction, and a time bomb is ticking.

As Olivia and Sherry battle to save Hannah, try to neutralize the fiendish plan of an ex bent on revenge, and endure a terrifying race for their lives through the Florida wetlands; a final betrayal waits patiently in the dark. Smiling.

Praise for The Crushing:

"Fans of Frieda McFadden and Lisa Jewell will stay up past their bedtimes devouring the latest thriller from Kerry Peresta! Haunted by her abusive ex-husband, P.I. Olivia Callahan had better keep her friends close and her enemies closer. Now, if she could only tell them apart. When one of her best friends goes missing in a Florida swamp, the clock is ticking. The suspense winds tighter on every page!"
~ Kelly Oliver, author of the Jessica James Mysteries

"The tension in Kerry Peresta's The Crushing is off the chain. Chilling! 'I can beat this,' the captive whispers from her locked room. 'I will escape.' Taut. Gripping. Engrossing. Highly recommended!"
~ Tracy Clark, award-winning author of the Cass Raines Chicago mysteries and the Detective Harriet Foster series.

"Rich details, a strong, character-driven plot, and enough snaky twists and turns to give you vertigo - this fourth entry in Kerry Peresta’s Olivia Callahan series will have you sweating bullets and turning pages like a tornado, leaving you as breathless as a mile sprinter. There’s nothing less simple than a simple missing-persons case, and there are far worse things than gators in the dark, dank Florida boonies. Don’t believe me? Read The Crushing."
~ J.R. Sanders, Shamus Award winning author of the Nate Ross novels.

Book Details:

Genre: Thriller, Suspense
Published by: Level Best Books
Publication Date: October 15, 2024
Number of Pages: 310
ISBN: 978-1-68512-770-1
Series: Olivia Callahan Suspense, Book Four
Book Links: Amazon | Goodreads | Level Best Books

Enjoy an Excerpt:

PROLOGUE

Sherry crammed the phone against her ear as she dashed through the thick undergrowth, trudged across boggy marshes, and arrived at a feeder stream.

“Olivia! Olivia?”

Nothing.

“Dammit!” she muttered, shoving her cell back into her pocket. She calculated that the nearest town rested fifteen miles down the highway out here in Florida-cracker country, and holing up until the shooter emerged seemed the best option.

She should’ve known there’d be no service out here.

Where did he go? She scraped mud off her face and rubbed her sunburned cheeks. He actually fired a weapon. On no planet had she ever thought this little trek would become a fight for her life, yet here she stood, hands glued to the trunk of a huge palm, eyes darting back and forth across the marshy, pancake-flat wastelands of inland Florida. Behind her lay a wide body of water surrounded by suspicious-looking marsh grass and, she suspected, alligators…and in front of her lay miles of marshland and bedraggled palms spearing the sky.

Why had she volunteered for this assignment, again?

“I just had to get my investigator’s license,” she muttered. “Maybe I should’ve stayed put as Olivia’s assistant instead of private investigator. This isn’t quite how I envisioned the job.”

She rubbed her calves. How long had she been running? Fifteen minutes? Twenty? An hour? Where was Olivia?

The distant blast of gunfire reached her ears. A bullet sliced through the air and hit the tree she’d wrapped herself around, missing her hand by inches. Sherry felt her stomach freeze into a block of ice.

Wiping the sweat from her eyes, she slid her hand to the paddle holster on her belt, gripped her Smith & Wesson revolver, and released the safety strap. Another crack of gunfire erupted closer this time. She swallowed, hard. A whoosh of air zipped past a mere twelve inches in front of her nose. Sherry dropped to the ground like a stone. The spikey bushes on the ground dug into her arms, her chest, her legs. She located a slight rise about ten feet away, and hastily low-crawled through the weeds on her stomach, edged to the top of the incline, and threw herself over the top.

Breathing hard, she peeked out above the edge. The crack-crack-crack of shots fired caused her to dive for cover. She took a deep breath, wiped the sweat off her palms, and fired back a volley of her own. When silence fell, she relaxed against the incline and tugged out her phone. A signal!

With fumbling fingers, she pressed in Olivia’s number. She waited through one ring, then two, before her call was answered.

“Where are you?” Olivia’s anxious voice demanded. “Are you okay?”

Tears of relief trailed down her cheeks. She rattled off a description of her location. Her gaze trained on the best-case origination of shots fired, she whispered, “Olivia! I found Hannah. She’s exhausted and weak, but I’ve got her.” Sherry listened to Olivia’s instructions. “Okay. I’ll meet you at the airport, but…wait. I hear something,” she whispered, and stuck the phone back in her pocket. She gripped her weapon with both hands.

Minutes passed. Sherry tried to breathe.

Something shuffled through the grass. Her eyes sliced left, right.

The shuffling stopped.

The hum of cicadas intensified. She swatted at mosquitoes. Sweat trickled down her face.

Sherry adjusted her grip on her sidearm.

She strained to hear more footsteps, but only heard the faint squawk of herons and hoot of owls. The setting sun left a red slash on the horizon. Bats dipped and swooped above her.

She lowered her weapon, puzzled. Had one of her prior shots wounded her target?

Taking her time, she rose from her niche behind the incline.

A single shot burst from her adversary’s weapon and sizzled through the air.

She cried out in pain. The bullet had nicked her, the sting of a monster wasp. She groped her waist with her free hand and lifted it away wet with blood. Rage rushed through her chest and down her arms. She planted her legs wide and emptied her weapon in the direction of the shooter.

The phone in her pocket vibrated with a text as she reloaded.

Another bullet clipped her in the shoulder.

The sound of sirens wailed in the distance.

She collapsed.

***

Excerpt from The Crushing by Kerry Peresta. Copyright 2024 by Kerry Peresta. Reproduced with permission from Kerry Peresta. All rights reserved.

 

 

About the Author:

Kerry Peresta is a suspense novelist, and her releases include The Deadening, The Rising, The Torching, and The Crushing, books one-four in the Olivia Callahan Suspense series; and Back Before Dawn, a standalone thriller, all published by Level Best Books Publishing. Her magazine articles have appeared in Hilton Head’s Local Life Magazine, The Bluffton Breeze, Lady Lowcountry, and Island Events Magazine. She spent twenty-five years in advertising as an account manager, creative director, editor, and copywriter. She is past chapter president of the Maryland Writers’ Association and a current member and presenter of Hilton Head Island Writers’ Network, South Carolina Writers Association, Pat Conroy Literary Center, International Thriller Writers, and the Sisters in Crime organization. Kerry is the mother of four adult kids, a flock of grandkids, and three cats. She and her husband moved to Hilton Head Island in 2015. 

Q&A with the Author

Who is your favorite author and why?

I have many, but for the purposes of this interview I’ll choose best-selling, celebrated thriller author, Freida McFadden. She’s a practicing physician, and specializes in brain injuries. This is a fascinating little tidbit about her, and completely coincidental that my series centers around a character that was assaulted and dumped outside an ER as a Jane Doe with a TBI – traumatic brain injury. Maybe authors interested in brains have a direct connection! Not sure, but her books are riveting! She is my hero, and I aspire to write as breathtakingly scintillating as she does. Actually, some of my reviews DO include the same types of phrases as hers, so I take heart in that. Freida, call me. Let’s do lunch.

What is something unique/quirky about you?

I live on Hilton Head Island, a seafood-lover’s paradise, and don’t eat seafood. I get so much heat about that. Seafood people try their darnedest to convert non-seafood people and I don’t get it. I wrote an article about it, actually. Seafood lovers become agitated and struck with a holy mandate or something to show non-seafood lovers the “light”. They’re convinced they will be the hero bearing the gold star that will convert the poor soul who doesn’t delight in a fresh catch. I find it hilarious. My non-seafood-lover status stems from an overly sensitive nose. I cannot stand the smell of fish in any shape or form, or the smell of onions. My poor nose picks up everything, much to my husband’s consternation. Of course, he loves every smelly kind of food there is.

What was your inspiration for writing this book?

At one of my first author events, a young woman on the other side of the room was getting all the business. People flocked to her table, while the rest of us sat around getting no attention at all! Irritated, I got up and strode to her table, threading my way through the throng. When I asked her why she was selling books and we weren’t, she blinked, smiled, and told me she’d been the victim of a car crash that landed her in a coma that lasted six months. They’d almost given up hope. Then, she woke up! However, she arose a different woman. Once a shy wallflower, the brain injury she’d suffered had flipped her personality. Her brain had healed in such a way that she became engaging, curious, friendly, unafraid. It drew people. I walked back to my table thinking about the amazing character that could be, and wrote the first book in my series based on her experiences.

What did you enjoy most about writing this book?

Discovering Olivia Callahan. The research about brain injury and adaptation was amazing. The brain is an amazing organ, and I have new respect for it after a deep dive into all the faculties it possesses to heal itself. Olivia became a flexible, interesting character, and I’m enjoying taking the journey into her new life after the assault she suffered that left her in a coma and stole her memories. On the positive side, she becomes a determined driven woman throughout my series, and I think my new release, The Crushing, is the best example yet of how she’s succeeded at overcoming her many obstacles along the road to recovery. Note: The Crushing can be read as a standalone.

Do you have any other books you are working on that you can tell us about?

I’m working on book five in the Olivia Callahan Suspense series. The working title is The Shaking. I have another manuscript finished and ready to go once I find an appropriate venue for it.

Anything more you would like to say to your readers and fans?

I’d like to tell them how much I appreciate their support in reading my books, especially the reviews on Amazon & Goodreads, and that without my readers and their encouragement, I’d be one of those writing hermits tapping away in a corner, depressed and discouraged. My readers’ support means everything! I love to hear from them. If you’d like to stay in touch, find my website here. Fill out the contact pop-up form, and I will add you to my newsletter email army!

Catch Up With Kerry Peresta:

kerryperesta.com
Goodreads
BookBub - @kerryperesta
Amazon Author Page
Instagram - @kerryperesta
Twitter/X - @kerryperesta
Facebook Author Page
Facebook Personal Page

 

 

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