KILLER HOLIDAY by Amy Korman (Showcase, Interview & Giveaway)

Killer Holiday

by Amy Korman

on Tour October 23 – November 30, 2017

Synopsis:

Killer Holiday by Amy Korman

Kristin Clark and her offbeat crew of Bryn Mawr socialites are ready for a fun and festive winter holiday—one that involves sipping martinis by a crackling yule log, hot guys beneath the mistletoe, and Gucci under the Christmas tree. But this year, Old Saint Nick has something more dangerous in store. A stranger dressed in a Santa suit has Kristin’s friends on his naughty list. First, Sophie’s favorite handbag is blasted by a bullet. Then, Father Christmas shatters her brother Chip’s car window with a golf club and leaves a threatening note demanding fifty grand. Both are convinced it has to be a mistake. But when Chip goes missing, the stakes become deadly. Eula Morris is also back in town for the holidays, more bossy and boastful than ever after winning a mega-jackpot in the lottery. She’s returned from a luxury cruise around the world with a handsome new boyfriend (who looks oddly familiar…) and a Samsonite suitcase filled with gold bars. When the suitcase is snatched, Eula implores Kristin and the team to track it down. Where is Chip? Why is a vengeful Santa targeting the gang? Who stole Eula’s suitcase? And how are these events linked? The WASPs and Kristen’s basset hound Waffles are on the case—before this white Christmas turns even darker…

Book Details:

Genre: Mystery
Published by: Witness Impulse
Publication Date: October 24th 2017 by Witness Impulse
Number of Pages: 320
ISBN: 0062431366 (ISBN13: 9780062431363)
Series: A Killer WASPs Mystery, #4
Purchase Links: Amazon 🔗 | Barnes & Noble 🔗 | Goodreads 🔗

Amy Korman

Author Bio:

Amy Korman is a former senior editor and staff writer for Philadelphia Magazine, and author of Frommer’s Guide to Philadelphia. She has written for Town & Country, House Beautiful, Men’s Health, and Cosmopolitan. Killer WASPS is her first novel.

Interview

Welcome!
Writing and Reading:

Do you draw from personal experiences and/or current events?
The main character in Killer Holiday, antiques dealer Kristin Clark, is always stumbling into crime scenes with her friends, which doesn’t happen to me in real life—fortunately! And I’ve never had the good luck to own a charming shop like Kristin, but I’ve had plenty of bad part-time jobs like Kristin does. Also, Kristin and her friends find themselves on last-minute, impulsive trips to the Jersey Shore pretty frequently, and who doesn’t love a good road trip in real life? And, I love to include current trends that I find funny, cool and unlikely for the characters I write about, like the current obsessions with barbecue and artisanal booze that Holly and the Colketts are into in Killer Holiday.

My Killer Wasp series is set in a fictional version of the Philly suburbs, which is a beautiful place filled with cute small towns, farms, and of course the occasional country club like the ones in the books. I’ve lived my whole life in this area, so I combined some of my favorite parts of amazing towns like Lambertville and Frenchtown, NJ, with the real area known as the Main Line of Philly to create a version of Bryn Mawr.

Do you start with the conclusion and plot in reverse or start from the beginning and see where the story line brings you?
I like to know where the story and Kristin and her friends are headed! Detours happen, but the route and destination are fairly well mapped out.

Are any of your characters based on you or people that you know?
The character of Kristin is much more free-spirited than I am—and she’s younger, more of a risk-taker, and even though she worries that her friends are going to land her in risky situations, she’s careful but fearless.
I wish I had the free time and energy Kristin and her friends have to do stakeouts, break-ins, and pose as hotel staff and postal employees. I don’t base characters on real people, but I’ve always liked the country clubbing types that are featured in the books, and I love confident, sporty tennis girls like Bootsie, since I personally can’t play at all! I also really enjoy being around world-weary, slightly bitter types like Joe, who’s secretly an optimist.

Your routine when writing? Any idiosyncrasies?
JUST DO IT works for me, as soon as I can get to my desk first thing in the morning. Think positive and be fully caffeinated!

Tell us why we should read this book.
Killer Holiday is light, escapist, and transports you to a world where the biggest problem is a stolen suitcase full of jewelry and gold that a lottery winner named Eula “forgot” to declare at Customs when stepping off a round the world cruise. There’s mystery in Killer Holiday—where is Bootsie’s missing brother Chip, and will his left eyelid get chopped off if he doesn’t come up with fifty grant by Christmas?—but there’s also “drama lite” such as Kristin and her friends needing to convince two upscale party planners that most people don’t want fancy food and DO want baked ziti and pulled pork at a holiday party.

Who are some of your favorite authors?
Agatha Christie and P.G. Wodehouse are timeless, smart, inventive and hilarious.

What are you reading now?
Jan Karon’s To Be Where You Are. So sweet and positive.

Are you working on your next novel? Can you tell us a little about it?
I’m working on a tropical mystery with an unlikely group of criminals and detectives, with margaritas and sunshine to keep things light.

Fun questions:
Your novel will be a movie. Who would you cast?

Prince Carl Phillip of Sweden would be the perfect Mike Woodford! I think he’s busy being a gorgeous, dashing prince though.

Favorite leisure activity/hobby?
There’s nothing better than walking our basset hound, and love to jog, work on my veggie garden, and head to concerts. We’ve also been taking Murphy the dog on weekend getaways, since he loves a road trip.

Favorite meal?
Chocolate, especially dark and with almonds. Is that a meal?
CM: A girl after my own heart. I think chocolate should be served with every meal! 🙂

Thank you for stopping by CMash Reads and spending time with us.

Catch Up With Ms. Korman On: amykorman.com 🔗, Goodreads 🔗, Twitter 🔗, & Facebook 🔗!

Read an excerpt:

Chapter One

Bootsie McElvoy burst through the front door of The Striped Awning, a bag of ice in her right hand and the biggest bottle of Maker’s Mark bourbon I’ve ever seen in her left. She dug into her L.L. Bean tote for a bottle of red wine, a shaker of nutmeg, and a bag of fun-size candy canes, all of which she deposited next to a display of 1940s barware near the front of my antiques store.

“Kristin, it’s December fifteenth, which means it’s time for you to start offering shoppers a specialty cocktail the minute they set foot inside your store,” Bootsie told me. “I’m going to mix up a batch of the Delaney family Christmas drink, the Bourbon Blitzen, which never fails to produce a White Christmas vibe. One sip and you’ll feel like you’re singing and dancing with Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye at a snowy Vermont inn. This should double your sales totals for the month.”

“Thanks!” I said gratefully, since Bootsie’s family’s boozy drinks are known throughout our village of Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, for their potency and tendency to produce unwise purchases.

“The drinks sound good, but you’re also going to need about four thousand more of these pinecones, triple the greenery, and eight hundred additional strands of lights,” Joe Delafield informed me; he’d arrived twenty minutes earlier to help me decorate my store for the Christmas rush.

To lure in passing foot traffic, I’d brought in armloads of holly and spruce branches from my backyard (cost: free, thankfully), spray-painted pinecones silver (the paint was only $5.28 at the hardware store), and added some cheerful-looking blinking white lights. This would probably bring tons of holiday shoppers through my front door!

Joe paused, eyeing the room with his signature critical stare. “The effect I’m going for is that a bunch of HGTV-crazed elves with subscriptions to Veranda magazine snuck in and decorated for four straight days. Gerda, we’re going to need the blinking lights to stop blinking, pronto. Pull the plug, please.”

Joe’s assistant for the day was the eponymous owner of Gerda’s Bust Your Ass Gym, which is housed inside the beauty salon across the street. Since Gerda stands a lofty six feet tall in flats (or sneakers, which is her usual footwear, since fancy shoes aren’t her style), she’d agreed to hang ornaments, bringing her signature grim attitude to the proceedings.

“Cute idea,” Bootsie observed, casting a dubious stare at my front window, which was filled with antique silver-plated candlesticks, flatware, and wineglasses. “Is that your holiday inventory?”

“Nobody going to want that stuff,” said Gerda, who moved here from her native Austria a few years back. Gerda, who’s incredibly muscular and brings in sell-out crowds at her Pilates classes, isn’t the most tactful person in the world. “People want, like, scarves and Fitbits and iPhones.”

I sighed, knowing Gerda was right. Those were the gifts on most holiday wish lists.

“Luckily, I’ve solved all your problems,” Bootsie told me. “I ran into Eddie from the Pub this morning, and he needs a place to hold some late-night poker tournaments this month, so I brokered a deal for The Striped Awning. You’ll be hosting twice-weekly games from 10 p.m. till 1 a.m., Tuesdays and Thursdays till Valentine’s Day.”

“What!” I erupted, alarmed by this idea. “First of all, that doesn’t sound legal.”

“It’s fine,” she told me, waving away my concerns. “I mean, it’s not like it will be a professional betting operation. Eddie’s limiting each night to ten players and three hours. Some cards, a few drinks, a few small wagers. What could go wrong?”

“A lot!” I said. “They’ll blow cigar smoke and drop Dorito crumbs everywhere. Not to mention get arrested for operating a casino without a license. A lot could go wrong!”

“You worry too much,” Bootsie informed me dismissively. “Plus, he’ll pay you two hundred dollars a night.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but no words came out. Bootsie knew she had me—there’s no way I can refuse an extra four hundred dollars a week, even if it puts me on the wrong side of the state gaming commission.

Just then, though, the front door was thrown open by one Sophie Shields, a tiny blonde who at the moment was looking slightly wild-eyed.

“Ya won’t believe what just happened!” shrieked Sophie. “The Colketts were helping me put up curtains in my new dining room, since Joe here never finished decorating my place—and the curtains are orange silk, by the way, they’re totally Elle Decor meets a J. Lo red-carpet gown. So Tim and Tom Colkett were talking paint colors when I heard a horn honking, so I opened the front door, thinking it was the delivery boy from the Hoagie House. I figured I’d go out and pay the driver, when boom!

“A guy dressed as Santa leaned out of the driver’s seat of a black SUV that had pulled right up in my driveway and aimed a gun at me and the Colketts!” The Colketts are the town’s leading landscape designers, who’ve lately turned their talents to party planning and interior design.

“Then the guy yelled, ‘Hey, Sophie, this one’s from your ex, Barclay!’ and shot my favorite handbag!” Sophie finished. “I was reaching into it to pay for the hoagies, thank goodness, so it acted as a protective shield. Also, I think maybe this Santa guy doesn’t have great aim.”

We all stared at her for a moment.

“Are you sure, Sophie?” said Bootsie finally. “Because this sounds like BS.”

“Yeah, Sophie, maybe you been hitting the wine bottle today,” seconded Gerda. “I know the Colketts are day drinkers. Maybe you been guzzling alcohol, too.”

“It’s true!” Sophie bleated. “Just look at this Ferragamo satchel! If it hadn’t had gold hardware to block the trajectory of the bullet, me and the Colketts would have been toast!”

***

Excerpt from Killer Holiday by Amy Korman. Copyright © 2017 by Amy Korman. Reproduced with permission from Witness Impulse. All rights reserved.

Tour Participants:

Visit the other great hosts on this tour for more great reviews, interviews, guest posts, and giveaways!

Giveaway:

This is a rafflecopter giveaway hosted by Partners in Crime Virtual Book Tours for Amy Korman and Witness Impulse. There will be 3 winners of one (1) eBook copy of KILLER PUNCH by Amy Korman. The giveaway begins on October 23 and runs through December 3, 2017.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Get More Great Reads at Partners In Crime Virtual Book Tours

2 thoughts on “KILLER HOLIDAY by Amy Korman (Showcase, Interview & Giveaway)

  1. Thank you so much for the fun interview, Cheryl! Hope everyone enjoys the books and has a great holiday season that’s full of mystery and festive cocktails!
    Amy Korman
    amykorman.com

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.