Greg Dillensnyder
pinecirclepublications.wordpress.com
2022
Greg Dillensnyder returned to his love for fiction writing after retirement from a life-long career in clinical social work as a psychotherapist. In his writing he is committed to creating strong women characters who, along with their male counterparts, challenge sexist stereotypes.
He earned a B.A. in English from Pennsylvania State University and a Master of Clinical Social Work degree from the University of Pittsburgh.
While he grew up in a small, eastern Pennsylvania town similar to Mountain City, the location of the plots in the Aubrey McKenna series, he now makes his home in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area with his wife and two cats. Two adult sons and their families, including two grandchildren live nearby. They are the joys of his life.
Murder at Mountain Tavern
AUBREY McKENNA, a celebrated criminal investigator, has lost almost everything she ever cared about. After a heart-wrenching breakup with the man she thought was her soul mate, her job of a lifetime crumbled in a publicly humiliating dismissal from her position as chief investigator for the attorney general of Pennsylvania. She now finds herself between jobs, struggling to maintain newly found sobriety and determined to recover personally and professionally. At the request of her best friend, the assistant district attorney for Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, she accepts a job investigating a previously solved murder. New evidence, which will likely exonerate the man already serving a life sentence, has been discovered, and it appears that the real killer in the horrific slashing of a teenage girl is still at large. Will McKenna be able to solve this thirty-year-old cold case?
In Mountain City, Pennsylvania—a sleepy small town in the heart of what was once the state’s eastern anthracite coal mining region—appearances are deceiving, and the investigation enmeshes McKenna in both a web of intrigue with the town’s power broker and an unexpected opportunity for romance. In her quest for delayed justice, which also becomes a search for self and recovery, McKenna uses persistence, grit, and human compassion to negotiate the twists, turns, and surreal coincidences of an investigation that ultimately reaches far beyond the confines of Mountain City. Her search for the killer unearths a trail of serial rape and murder—and political corruption reaching into the depths of the state’s capital.
The Loner
Aubrey McKenna, Chief Investigator for the Schuylkill County District Attorney, is approaching a ‘crossroads’ decision about her career when she accepts an invitation to evaluate strange middle-of-the-night activity on Graffiti Highway in deserted Centralia, Pennsylvania. A crime cartel’s sinister logo has unexpectedly appeared among the colorful mile-long smorgasbord of other drawings on the old, abandoned highway.
An unlikely Centralia informant reports strange night lights related to the logo’s location, and he has alarming premonitions that predict an impending catastrophic event to befall eastern Pennsylvania. The ominous gang symbol, if genuine, could portend that a new, perilous threat might be looming from an infamous drug and human trafficking syndicate making its way into the area.
While McKenna is considering whether these vague reports are even worthy of investigation, she gradually uncovers evidence suggesting a convoluted threat to her eastern Pennsylvania county. But is it real or just a figment of her informant’s imagination? Can she figure all of that out in time to avert disaster…if there really is one coming?
Confronting her innate skepticism about the ‘other-worldly’ aspects of her informant’s source of clues, she must transcend her own preconceptions of human differences to get to the root of what is really happening on Graffiti Highway. With her true-grit, no-nonsense style, she has to muster everything she’s ever learned about forensic psychology and investigation to keep ahead of what might become a horrendous cataclysm.