Exposure

July 12, 2024

Emerson's sequel to LJ Best Book Shutter finds Navajo forensic photographer Rita Todacheene facing a serial killer and the ghosts of his victims. The killer is targeting Indigenous people whose murders can be disguised as death by exposure to the cold, while Rita is dealing with hostile colleagues, her frail grandmother, and ghosts looking for justice. Prepub Alert.

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August 5, 2024
Emerson’s riveting second paranormal thriller featuring Rita Todacheene (after Shutter) finds the Navajo forensic photographer laying low following the traumatic events of the previous novel. Long viewed with suspicion because of her ability to see ghosts, Rita has become a pariah among her law enforcement colleagues after exposing corruption in the department. Her medical leave ends early when she’s called to a gruesome crime scene where teenager Jude Montaño—the eldest son of a retired Albuquerque detective—appears to have killed his entire family. At the scene, the ghosts of Jude’s young siblings appear to Rita. One of them leads her to evidence suggesting that their father was sexually abusing them, and that Jude is innocent. Unable to toe the thin blue line of silence, Rita resigns and returns to her family on the reservation near Gallup, N.Mex. Her peace is short-lived, however, as the ghosts of indigent Native people who died at the hands of a clergy-affiliated serial killer begin to haunt her, and she’s forced to launch an under-the-radar investigation that she suspects could connect to the Montaño case. Visceral prose (a young ghost’s breath “smelled of blood and gunpowder”) elevates Emerson’s impressive blend of crime fiction and supernatural horror. This series deserves a long life. Agent: Nancy Stauffer, Nancy Stauffer Assoc.

September 1, 2024
A pair of antagonists with eerily complementary vocations square off against each other. Rita Todacheene, a Navajo photo specialist for the Albuquerque crime lab, not only sees dead people but hears them too, and they have plenty to say. Margarita Monta�o, one of six children shot to death along with their parents, tells Rita that even though her surviving brother, Jude, has been in police custody ever since he walked into the First Desert Light Church with an empty revolver, he didn't murder his family: "It was Daddy." But although Steven Monta�o left behind photographic evidence that he abused all three of his daughters, he was a retired Albuquerque PD detective, and the blue wall closes around him. Since no one credits Rita's secondhand testimony--which, granted, does sound a little far-fetched--and the cops insist that she keep her ideas to herself, she quits her job, leaving herself unmoored and adrift. In the meantime, Brother Gabriel Jensen, who's moved by an equally strong passion to help the street people of nearby Gallup by setting them free of their mortal coils, graduates to murdering former Gallup mayor Emmitt Gurley, whose ghost threatens Rita with serious harm if she doesn't bring his killer, whom he declines to identify, to justice. The high-profile deaths that follow lead Det. Arviso to ask Rita for help. Rita, who can't turn down another Navajo, takes up the gauntlet, setting the stage for a final battle with an adversary who also hears voices and acts on them even more decisively than she does. Less a mystery than a compelling, interlocked portrait of two troubled souls.

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September 15, 2024
Emerson introduced Rita Todacheene in her explosive debut, Shutter (2022), and this is a bar-raising follow-up. Haunted Navajo forensic photographer Rita is experiencing a rough recovery after being shot while exposing departmental corruption. Her coworkers questioning her loyalty and sanity and her near-death experience draw even more spirits to her. Now she not only sees the dead, she can hear them, and their relentless demands drain her mind and body. Rita returns home to her grandmother's reservation, where intensive cleansing rituals provide some respite. But when detectives from nearby Gallup ask her to help process an overwhelming spike in death investigations, Rita's obligation to speak for the dead compels her to agree. In Gallup, similarities in the murders of a drug dealer and a Navajo-hating city council member point toward an active serial killer, while an intense snowstorm ravages the largely native, unhoused population. The spirits insist that evil is coming to take more lives. Emerson's storytelling shines with a multifaceted, ironic exploration of savior narratives and brutal truths. Here's hoping Emerson writes more than a trilogy featuring Rita.

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