Murder Most Foul

Sue McGinty, whose last book, “Murder in Los Lobos” concerned a sewer and a dead woman, has published her second Bella Kowalski mystery, “Murder at Cuyamaca Beach.” And all characters, even the town, are purely fictional. Right. Sure.
Sue will be having a book signing party at Coalesce Bookstore in Morro Bay on Sunday, November 21st from 1 – 3 p.m.


Here’s the book blurb:

In 2004, Loreli Sereno has everything—looks, wealth, a great job as a real estate broker in a booming market, easy access to addictive substances. Then Loreli, supposedly clean and sober, dies in a kayaking accident with drugs in her system. "Murder," claims the Sereno family, major players in the emerging California Central Coast wine industry.

Five years later people have abandoned premium wines for two buck knockoffs. Creative financing forces the nouveau poor from their Mac-mansions, sometimes into homeless shelters. Everyone's credit cards are maxed-out, even Los Lobos residents, Bella and Mike Kowalski's.

Bella, a former nun, now a dirt-digging obituary editor, gets an urgent call from Magda Sereno regarding her sister's murder. Magda suspects Loreli's former fiancé, a maverick rancher who takes in the homeless on an ad hoc basis. Then Magda, a surfer, is brutally murdered on New Year’s Day at Cuyamaca Beach's annual Polar Bear dip.

MURDER AT CUYAMACA BEACH leads readers through the dark underbelly of California's scenic Central Coast, where the homeless gather under bridges while the wealthy slumber beneath satin sheets, and where a crowded, sunny beach offers no guarantee of safety.

Be All You Can Be – A Bigot

Republicans and a few spineless Democrats blocked a military appropriations bill, in part because it had a section in it that would repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. The vote recalled a line from William Yeats famous poem, “The Second Coming” and is a perfect description of our Congress and most of America today: “ The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.”

Be All You Can Be – A Bigot, Part II

In the dust-up on the so-called “9/11 Mosque,” in all the screaming about how 9/11 is a “sacred” site that shouldn’t be polluted by anything “Islamic,” this small fact has gone unnoticed. From The New York Times. “About 60 Muslims – electricians, ironworkers, financial analysts, restaurant workers, secretaries – died when the World Trade Center was destroyed by Islamic radicals on 9/11. Muslims who worked in the buildings prayed daily at a prayer room on the 17th floor of the south tower. ‘It had the feel of a real mosque,’ said Zafar Sareshwala, a financial executive who sometimes prayed there. ‘It was so freeing and so calm.”

So, the south tower of the World Trade Center had a Muslim prayer room in it, but an Islamic center to be located several blocks away is somehow polluting and disrespectful to this “sacred” site. And the families of the Muslims who died there who might find this site as sacred as anyone, need to go farther away (actually, just what would be considered an acceptable distance isn’t clear) to pray for their loved ones who died that day, along with all the others.

This, because, clearly, the 9/11 site is FOR CHRISTIANS ONLY. Since they’re the only ones who count.