Reporter Natalie Joday's career is at a crossroads. She thought she'd seen the last of cops and courtrooms, but if she agrees to join the Bergen Evening Star's crime bureau, foul play and forensics will be her daily fare. Natalie puts off the decision by getting involved in a newsroom mystery: who is sending letters filled with riddles and signed simply "Enigma" to the Star's elderly (and easily rattled) advice columnist? It's just a game to Natalie and her psychologist friend, Rebecca Elias, until the solution points to the murder of an alcoholic bankrupt, a man whose political career was ruined by the Star twenty years earlier. When she finds the body of a second victim, Natalie's mind is made up: whoever it was that burned off the dead man's face must pay. And fast-because a rival paper, The Bugle, is having a field day blasting the Star's owners as murder suspects on its front page. While her sometime friend Sgt. Geoff Allan tries to drag the truth from Myra Vandergelden, the Star's glamorous CEO and editor in chief, Natalie sets out to track down Enigma among the political bigwigs and power brokers of New Jersey. The situation comes to a head at a local Meet the Candidates event, when Natalie gets the chance to ask questions of her chief suspect. But can she get a politician to tell the truth? And will there be a paper left to work for if she does? Ellen Larson's short stories have appeared in Yankee Magazine, AHMM (Barry Award finalist), and Big Pulp. She is the author of the NJ Mysteries, The Hatch and Brood of Time and Unfold the Evil. After working as an editor in Egypt for fifteen years, she returned to the states and now lives in an off-grid cabin, enjoying the solitude.