When the House Burns

A two-time Foreword Indie Book Award finalist returns with a thrilling addition to the Twin Cities mystery series, “When the House Burns” (Coffeetown Press, February 14th, 2023). Priscilla Paton submerges the reader in a fast-paced mystery that tackles the societal implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on the housing market. 

When death comes home, is nowhere safe? 

The quest for love and home becomes deadly when Detectives Erik Jansson and Deb Metzger search for the killer of an adulterous real estate agent.

A volatile real estate market, unrest in a homeless encampment, jealousies among would-be lovers, a case of arson—these circumstances thwart G-Met detectives Erik Jansson and Deb Metzger as they investigate the murder of an adulterous woman. The victim’s estranged husband has holes in his alibi. A property developer grieves too much over the victim’s death, while his wife shuts him out. The developer’s assistant resents his boss, and suspects that the developer was not only involved with the victim, but is being scammed by the arsonist. A sexy young widow, friend of the victim, has past traumas triggered by the case and turns to the developer for protection. A homeless man stalked the dead woman, and now stalks the young widow. And all of them hold secrets about the past burning of an apartment complex and the man who died there.

Before the clues come together, Erik Jansson is trapped in an abandoned house as Deb Metzger hunts for a sharpshooter at a remote construction site. The case will burn down around them unless they can scheme their way out of lethal surroundings. 

Priscilla Paton grew up on a dairy farm in Maine, a state of woods, lakes, and rivers. She now lives in Minnesota, another state of woods, lakes, and rivers, not far from urban Minneapolis and St. Paul. She received a B.A. from Bowdoin College, a Ph.D. in English Literature from Boston College, and was a college professor. She has previously published a children’s book, Howard and the Sitter Surprise, and a book on Robert Frost and Andrew Wyeth, Abandoned New England. She is active in programs that support literacy, affordable housing, and the prevention of domestic violence and abuse. For fun, she enjoys her husband’s cooking and photographing birds. The first in the Twin Cities Mystery series, Where Privacy Dies, was a finalist for a 2018 Foreword Indies Book Award, and the second, Should Grace Fail, was a finalist for a 2020 Foreword Indies Book Award.