MAXIMUM IMPACT is both a standalone novel and a prequel to ILL WIND

So begins Pulitzer Prize finalist Jean Heller’s chilling hard-boiled saga, as a flight crashes on takeoff when one of its engines explodes in midair. After that, it’s a toss-up—you may or may not be able to catch your breath as the thriller loops and careens to a twisty climax.

The deadliest accident in U.S. aviation history means it’s the biggest week of journalist Steve Pace’s career. Much as he’s already over the horrors of the aviation beat, he has no choice but to rise to the occasion. He’s a whip-smart reporter with integrity and grit, and the body count is rising rapidly—outside the downed plane.

As he hunts down the ultimate scoop, he steps into what appears to be a Watergate-type cover-up. With the list of possible witnesses conspicuously dwindling, he figures it’s just a matter of time before someone blows the whistle—as long as they don’t mysteriously die first.

Fans of government conspiracy mysteries and reporter sleuths will find an inspiring hero in reporter Pace. Award-winning writer Jean Heller leverages her own journalistic prowess to spin together a complex web of a hard-boiled mystery. Each twist and turn of the investigation will pull mystery fans deeper into Pace’s quest, as he races against deadlines and death threats.

Deuce Mora’s one tough cookie–-a female sleuth with a conscience and an attitude–-fiery, tough, athletic, a dirty fighter when she has to be. In two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Jean Heller’s first mystery featuring the scrappy newspaper columnist, Deuce finds out in short order that if you mess with organized crime, you have to be tough—and you’d better be as much detective as reporter. When she walks into a seedy neighborhood bar in a suburb of Chicago–-all six feet of her, topped with auburn curls—she’s searching for a human-interest story. What she finds is Vinnie Colangelo, an aging mobster living on bad beer, cheap bourbon and regret for the life he wasted.

Vinnie hints at secrets much bigger than his rap sheet should entitle him to, and Deuce immediately discovers that somebody’s willing to kill to keep those secrets buried. She uncovers a series of crimes committed over nearly six decades, and, as her human interest story morphs into a hard-boiled, action-packed mystery, she finds herself dead center in a storm of threats and reprisals from the mob.

It’s not enough that the mob’s after her, and corrupt government is concealing the evidence that would explain why; even her own editors, frightened of lawsuits and losing subscribers, want her off the story.

Fortunately, she has many allies: a network of loyal co-workers and contacts, even an ardent new admirer. But which ones can she trust? At least one of them, she suspects, is hiding a secret–- corruption? Murder? The veteran reporter knows: if you’re talking Chicago crime scene—it’s probably both.

Though attacked in her home, stalked, and shot at, Deuce doggedly batters the well-oiled machinery of terror that has kept the secret buried so long. Heller meticulously builds her heroine’s investigation, as the evidence--and the danger--converge in a white-knuckling confrontation.

Although, to be fair, this one is brought to her by a dog with a bone in his teeth.

The grisly discovery of a human bone while Deuce is out for a hike with handsome arson investigator Mark Hearst leads to the unearthing of a vast burial field, a human trafficking ring, and international intrigue. The pull-no-punches columnist-- and meticulous detective-- keeps turning up information, bit by bit, only to find some Fed in her face, at her door, emerging from the shadows, always guarding the edges of the story, insisting it will not be told. Yes, the Feds are aware of the trafficking ring; yes, they have a plan to move on it; no, Deuce can’t be told about the plan; and under no circumstances can she write about its existence.

This is the story of a lifetime-- bigger than the Vinnie Colangelo story, which earned Deuce and the Journal a Pulitzer, and, for once, she has the support of her editor, but the Journal’s lawyer appears daily, bringing warnings about “national security.” What, Deuce seethes, could be a greater matter of national security than the safety of the city’s children, who are being kidnapped and murdered?

And this story has become very personal for Deuce, as she herself admits, lamenting her loss of objectivity. The hard-hitting journalist has fallen hard for a new guy: a savvy and charming eight-year-old boy named Charles with the face of an angel and the possibility of a bright future, but at great risk due to a life in foster care. Already the street-smart kid has revealed a depth of knowledge about the failures of DCFS and the machinery meant to protect him. For Deuce, every child reported missing and every new body discovered in the hunting ground has Charles’s face. But while she’s racing to break the case wide open, her life and her career are threatened on all sides; she has to wonder where-- or if-- the Feds will stop to contain the horrific truth.

But break wide open it does, racing to an outrageous surprise ending that seems shockingly … plausible, and Deuce learns first-hand the lesson that sometimes the only way to accomplish a great good is to commit unthinkable evil, and then learn to live with the consequences. Author Heller does a masterful job of expanding the story-- and her canvas-- from a simple murder mystery to an ever-widening crime thriller, and finally to an international conspiracy.

It’s already been a rough year for the Chicago Journal’s first-rate journalistic sleuth, Deuce Mora. After two agonizing investigations – one of which won her a Pulitzer Prize, the other of which forced her to kill a man – she claims she’s sworn off action-packed chases that cause nightmares. Still…from the moment she hears the earliest details of the first fire, her detective-instincts say the pieces don’t fit, and every other instinct tells the hard-hitting reporter she can’t walk away from the story – even though she knows she’ll regret it.

As a series of deadly fires destroys landmarks first, then occupied structures, the body count rises by scores and the city is gripped by terror at Christmastime, adding lost revenue to property damage in the hundreds of millions. Whole blocks of Chicago real estate are falling to an arsonist, but no one knows why and everyone suspects the worst – terrorism.

After the initial tip from the lead arson investigator (aka her boyfriend), Deuce is on her own to solve the mystery. Their relationship could endanger his reputation and his job if he’s even suspected of leaking information to her, so they’ve called a temporary halt. But she’s not exactly lacking for company – her old adversary, FBI agent Colter, has a tail on her, and Colter himself keeps popping out of the shadows. His presence at the crime scene and, even more revealingly, that of an NSA agent point to the suspicion of jihadist terrorism. But no terrorist group has claimed the mayhem.

Heller’s chilling, diabolical plot promises fans of hard-boiled mysteries a substantial feast to sink their teeth into and a knock-your-socks-off ending.

Hard-hitting veteran reporter Deuce Mora is awakened in the pre-dawn hours and called to the scene of a gruesome hanging to identify the body of a dear friend, an FBI agent on the verge of taking down one of Chicago’s biggest Mob operations. Deuce knows it’s murder, but the authorities have no choice but to call it a suicide – the death scene was triple-locked from the inside.

And with that, author Heller, a former journalist and frequent Pulitzer nominee, takes her place with Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, and the great Edgar Allan Poe himself as one of the few authors ever to pull off a locked-room murder. In this one, half the fun is trying to figure out the locked-room puzzle. And the delight of finding one in a contemporary mob mystery.

The other half of course, is the tenacious Deuce herself, the tough, hard-boiled, and ever-human reporter who goes places the cops don’t even know about. And Heller’s intricate, action-packed mystery story.

The ill wind sweeping the Windy City has also whipped up two more unexplainable deaths – of perfectly healthy, able-bodied young mobsters,key witnesses about to flip on the top leaders of the Mob operation. Neither the Chicago police nor the FBI can come up with a cause of death – and they’ve looked at every kind of toxin – but our meticulous investigator, whose stock-in-trade is death-defying leaps of logic, fits together a couple of impossible puzzle pieces. The downside is that the bad guys figure out where their greatest exposure lies – and Deuce quickly becomes their new target.

Enter a Washington reporter who has been following the organized crime investigation for months at its source, in D.C. He and Deuce share a dark secret and he knows exactly where to apply pressure on her demons to keep her on the trail of her friend’s murderers. But as the Windy City begins to look more and more like the Chicago of Al Capone days, with bodies turning up in the river and shoot-outs in public places, Deuce discovers she couldn’t walk away even if she wanted to. Whoever is at the top – and this is Chicago, so the top is always way up – will stop at nothing to shut down this investigation.

Investigative reporter Deuce Mora's seen it all, been there, done everything, but waking up in a swamp next to a plane crash with no memory of how she got there is a whole other order of scary. She's so disoriented she actually considers trusting the mysterious swamp hermit who says he needs to hide her to protect her from the search helicopters circling above. But he could be right - the helicopters belong to what passes for law and order in Joe Pye County with a sadistic, corrupt sheriff at the head.

If Deuce ever gets out of this alive, she'll have a lot to answer for to both her editor at the paper (who pointedly instructed her not to go to Joe Pye County) and her fiancé Mark, who did not sign on for Deuce's daredevil shenanigans.