A Memory of Fire

By Bruce Balfour

Deal Ends: Fri 11th April

A mystery/pulp thriller with a strong female lead for fans of J.A. Jance, L.T. Ryan, Steven Konkoly, Lisa Gardner, Robert Campbell, Nic Pizzolatto, Daniel Pyne.A disgraced former DEA agent haunted by her dark past must defeat drug lords in Hollywood to rescue her kidnapped daughter.Carla Cruz is a medicated single mother, and former DEA agent, living a quiet life with her teenage daughter. When she is invited to a Hollywood party, she meets two film investors who turn out to be drug lords—and one of them is the man who murdered her DEA husband ten years earlier. When the drug lords realize who she is, they force her to search for sixty million in cash stolen by her husband. They kidnap her daughter as leverage, frame Carla for murder, and give her a deadline.Getting help from the kinds of criminals she used to arrest, Carla must race across the country to track down clues in the dying small town where she and her husband were raised, digging up secrets about her painful family history so that she and her daughter will have a future.Chased by the police and the cartel, Carla must confront her past, overcome her fears, rely on criminals for help, fight the side effects of her anti-psychotic medication, and defeat the drug cartel to rescue her daughter—and herself—before they are both killed.A Memory of Fire is first in the Carla Cruz series, followed by Shooting Stars, but all books in the series can be read as standalone novels.Bruce Balfour is the national bestselling author of The Forge of Mars (Ace), its sequel, The Digital Dead, and 2024 Amazon Charts #1 bestseller Deadfall (as B.J. Balfour), and 2024/2025 Amazon Charts #1 bestseller, The River of Eternity, among other novels.