Said the Fly

On a remote Spanish island near the African coast, a young scientist, Epiphany Jerome, is looking for a rare beetle. Instead, she finds a body on an empty beach with a knife sticking out from its back. It's not just another tourist. It's the daughter of Epiphany's landlady and the single mother of an 11-year old girl devoted to Epiphany's small dog, Mostly. As a forensic entomologist trained in the language of insects, Epiphany can tell the police more about the baffling murder than, apparently, they care to know. Epiphany, a Mexican American married to an Italian, still struggles with her Catholic upbringing and is drawn deeper into the secrets of the small harbor town, where traditional values are eroding under the pressures of tourism and Spain's growing economic crisis. A second body turns up: a beautiful hooker from Berlin that Epiphany's husband knows just a little too well. The Medical Examiner requests the entomologist's expertise once more, and this time, the police are very interested in what she has to say. But Epiphany has gone off alone into the island's rugged interior tracking nature's clues, unaware that her life is about to be irrevocably changed.

Laurie Taylor was born in California. After studying English Literature at Mills College where she was a Watson Fellow, and she worked as a journalist in the San Francisco Bay area while raising two daughters. A second career as a science illustrator led her to an MSc.in Biological Sciences and work as a field biologist, specializing in entomology. A chance meeting in India while collecting insects brought her to Europe and a year spent researching at Berlin’s Museum of Natural History. The museum figures in the background of the first and second Epiphany Jerome forensic mysteries. She has taught English in universities and colleges in both Germany and Turkey. She lives in a converted, pre-war factory in Neukölln, the Turkish neighborhood of Berlin, and is currently finishing a biography of her father, Dwight Taylor, a Hollywood screenwriter and bon vivant. She blogs on Bugs and Books@www.laurietaylorbooks.com