The Virtual Suicide Machine

Social worker Mitch Adams receives an urgent plea to save his mentor, psychologist Tony Martin ... from himself. Ton'y quest to develop a Virtual Reality machine to prevent suicides hits a snag--the technology doesn't exist. He signs a contract with a local engineering firm whose bombastic Jewish leader oversees twelve "apostles", among them a beautiful and beguiling half-Arab female engineer named Danielle Naila. After months of round-the-clock work, Tony secretly tries the machine on himself and finds it works--only he's not alone. He "wakens" from the program to find he's been framed, his life's work stolen, and his wife has thrown him out of their home. Injured, he turns to his best friend Mitch to help recover the stolen machine and help restore his life. Dead bodies begin turning up in the machine's wake days before Pope Francis is to visit the St. Louis Cathedral Basilica. "Danny" may be the culprit, who is her master and what is their plan? During his hunt for Danny, Mitch dives into the worlds of corporate espionage and kidnapping, discovers the machine's frightening power, and deduces what Danny is prepared to do to carry out her goal. Mitch must think faster on his feet than ever before if he is to save those he loves and prevent a tragedy with global ramifications. To lend context to the series, Mitch teams up again with Detective JoJo Baker, a street-smart, slang-talking, city homicide detective who in book one (Interrogation) did his best to convict Mitch for the murder of his girlfriend and in book two (Counterfeit) asked for Mitch's help in seeing a counterfeiter in city jail. Their relationship has evolved over the years from one of enemies to frenemies to friends. The characters in the series age, relationships change, and they progress or regress like humans do. Book one is more of a classic mystery, who-done-it tale. Book two is part crime-fiction, psychological suspense in which no one and nothing is at it seems (Counterfeit garnered interest from motion picture studios for the movie rights). Book three is more of a thriller, grittier and more graphic than the first two, with more language, sexual situations, and violence than the first two. To rate them ala movies, the novels would be R-rated. They can be read as stand-alone fiction or in sequence.