At the age of twenty-one I had a brief career as a nightclub singer in Morocco and what I believe was a very near miss. This is a story of another young woman who finds herself in similar circumstances but is not so lucky. 


In my debut novel, Unreasonable Suspicion, management consultant and successful author Renata Gillenwater is trying to get her career back on track after a year-long episode of major depression. She is hired to do some consulting for a troubled local theater company by Chairman of the Board Dr. Asher Stern and his daughter, Executive Director Brenda Loewe. Weeks later when the artistic director, Roger Wilson, storms out of Renata’s sexual harassment training session with the other male employees following suit, an enraged Brenda vows to get him fired. That night Brenda is found murdered in the parking lot of the Jewish Community Center and a few days later a young man, Khalil Moussa, is arrested for her murder. In self-consciously liberal Portland, Oregon it is quickly characterized as a hate crime. Given her psychological fragility Renata is determined to stay focussed on rebuilding her career, never mind her unruly curiosity when a new acquaintance, Vasiliki Angelopoulos, who knows both the Stern and the Moussa families, insists that Khalil is innocent and pressures her to find out if anyone at the theater had a motive to murder her client.


After that turning point in my young adult life I set aside aspects of my creative potential to pursue the more pragmatic path of making a living by working in a variety of occupations in the private sector, graduating from the “school of hard knocks”, and simultaneously earning an M.S. in Management degree. My personal mission became making work better for people and I was eventually able to pursue that goal in my role as a human resources executive.  


In Unreasonable Suspicion, the first novel in the Wayward Workplace Mystery series - where HR and homicide collide - I have only just begun to weave the disparate threads of my experience into stories that I hope will resonate with anyone who’s ever had a bad boss or backstabbing co-worker.


Truth matters, even in fiction.

Loretta Dryden Fischer


                                                                                                               

At the age of twenty-one I had a brief career as a nightclub singer in Morocco and what I believe was a very near miss. This is a story of another young woman who finds herself in similar circumstances but is not so lucky. 


In my debut novel, Unreasonable Suspicion, management consultant and successful author Renata Gillenwater is trying to get her career back on track after a year-long episode of major depression. She is hired to do some consulting for a troubled local theater company by Chairman of the Board Dr. Asher Stern and his daughter, Executive Director Brenda Loewe. Weeks later when the artistic director, Roger Wilson, storms out of Renata’s sexual harassment training session with the other male employees following suit, an enraged Brenda vows to get him fired. That night Brenda is found murdered in the parking lot of the Jewish Community Center and a few days later a young man, Khalil Moussa, is arrested for her murder. In self-consciously liberal Portland, Oregon it is quickly characterized as a hate crime. Given her psychological fragility Renata is determined to stay focussed on rebuilding her career, never mind her unruly curiosity when a new acquaintance, Vasiliki Angelopoulos, who knows both the Stern and the Moussa families, insists that Khalil is innocent and pressures her to find out if anyone at the theater had a motive to murder her client.


After that turning point in my young adult life I set aside aspects of my creative potential to pursue the more pragmatic path of making a living by working in a variety of occupations in the private sector, graduating from the “school of hard knocks”, and simultaneously earning an M.S. in Management degree. My personal mission became making work better for people and I was eventually able to pursue that goal in my role as a human resources executive.  


In Unreasonable Suspicion, the first novel in the Wayward Workplace Mystery series - where HR and homicide collide - I have only just begun to weave the disparate threads of my experience into stories that I hope will resonate with anyone who’s ever had a bad boss or backstabbing co-worker.


Truth matters, even in fiction.

Loretta Dryden Fischer