Three Books by Charlene Bell Dietz

The Flapper, the Scientist, and the Saboteur

Quill Mark Press 2016  

A workaholic bio-medical scientist, Beth Armstrong, is torn between saving her sabotaged ground-breaking multiple sclerosis research or honoring an obligation to care for her chain-smoking, Cuba Libre drinking, ex-flapper aunt. Nursemaid ranks just above catching the plague on Beth’s scale, yet her ex-flapper aunt would prefer anything deadly to losing her independence under the hands of her obsessive compulsive niece. While a murderous culprit runs loose in the science institute, the raucous aunt entertains Beth’s neglected husband with nightly cocktails and stories form the Roaring twenties. The Flapper, the Scientist, and the Saboteur intertwines a corporate espionage mystery with a generational battle-of-wills story between a dedicated professional intent on fighting chaos to restore order and a free-spirited aunt who needs her niece to live in the moment.

 

The Flapper, the Impostor, and the Stalker

Quill Mark Press 2017

Kathleen McPherson, a college-bound, high-school student in Minneapolis, finds a classmate stabbed to death one night in the park next to her home. To Kathleen’s horror this classmate’s romantic life parallels her own. Gossip indicates the murdered girl carried on with the same older man.  A few days later a knife throwing maniac terrorizes Kathleen on her walk to school. When the older man, an employee of Kathleen’s father, disappears, everyone believes he’s drowned. Baffled and distraught, Kathleen argues with her mother, but her mother insists the two of them go together to console the man’s wife. During the visit, Kathleen becomes unnerved by an old woman telling strange tales of the missing man’s family.

 Kathleen talks her best friend into running away to Chicago to escape the knife-wielding stalker. She believes she’ll find happiness as a flapper. Instead of an entertainer’s life full of fun, frolic, and love, Kathleen encounters deception, death, heartbreak, and revenge. Not only does the stalker continue to pursue Kathleen, but she’s perplexed by a man who keeps giving her warnings. When she inadvertently becomes entangled with some bad guys, she must somehow not only thwart the knife thrower but escape being murdered by the mob.

 

The Scientist, the Psychic, and the Nut

Quill Mark Press 2019

Honoring her deceased mother's advice to recapture the romance in her marriage, a bio-medical scientist, Beth Armstrong, takes her husband, Harold, on the vacation of his dreams. From the start, their island vacation is doomed. Beth’s obsession to discover the identity of her biological father antagonizes everyone, including Harold. After being robbed by a thug, Beth meets an old woman who knows more than she tells, while a young girl whose mother has disappeared enchants Beth. However a gang of barefoot boys on an old boat fire up some toxic trouble, causing Beth and Harold's diving adventure to turn deadly.  Beth knows her marriage is lost along with the identity of her father unless she stops the murderer and convinces Harold of her devotion to him before his dream vacation turns into a lethal nightmare.

 

 

“Char Dietz uses extensive research, good writing, and a keen sense of the human psyche to create The Flapper, the Scientist, and the Saboteur. Beth Armstrong, the scientist and protagonist of this story, hits plenty of snags in her biomedical research into a cure for multiple sclerosis, just as she does in her relationships with her husband and with her aging, cantankerous aunt, but she doesn’t want to give up on any of it. Here is a story of a scientist’s struggle and a woman's personal struggle that, like any life experiment, brings us face-to-face with the meaning of failure, success, and, yes, even love.

—Paula Paul, author of Forgetting Tommie and Sins of the Empress

 

“Charlene Dietz crafts a gripping mystery that runs alongside—and frequently intrudes into—an equally compelling family drama. The story will keep you desperate for more, and the quick-witted, easy-flowing dialogue creates an atmosphere of excitement and energy that is sure to draw to draw you in. . . . a refreshingly well-executed and original book.”

—James Ayers, senior production editor, University of New Mexico Press

“Readers will initially settle in for a standard mystery . . . this story becomes much more than a simple who-dunit-it. It delightfully turns into serious literature. Dietz is a talented writer . . . Readers should hope for more captivating novels from this promising author.”

--Kirkus, Starred Review

Charlene Bell Dietz writes science and historical-suspense, award-winning mystery novels and short stories.  Her award-winning short stories have been published in the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers 2016 Anthology and SouthWest Writers 2019 Anthology.   

The Flapper, the Scientist, and the Saboteur combines family saga with corporate espionage. The Flapper, the Impostor, and the Stalker propels readers back into 1923 frenetic Chicago during the Roaring Twenties. Both these novels were named to Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books of 2018, and each won the coveted Kirkus Starred Review. 

Her latest novel, The Scientist, the Psychic, and the Nut, gives readers a frightening Caribbean vacation. Her current work in progress, a biographical historical novel, starts in England in 1638 and ends in precolonial Maryland. Charlene, a retired educator, traveled the United States as a consultant for Houghton Mifflin Publishers after a career of teaching little ones, older ones, and college graduates. 

Surrounded by forests and meadows, she currently lives in the foothills of the mountains in central NM several miles from the small village of Torreon. Charlene was president of Croak & Dagger for three years, New Mexico Chapter of Sisters in Crime. She belongs to Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers, Rocky Mountain Mystery Writers, Mystery Writers of America, and SouthWest Writers. Connect with Charlene on Facebook, https://inkydancestudios.com/  or chardietzpen@gmail.com