Stupid Gravity
“The writing has this blunt, unvarnished rhythm that feels like someone is talking to you while the city hums right outside the window . . .” ★★★★ — Literary Titan
SECOND PLACE WINNER IN THE BOOKFEST FALL, 2025 MYSTERY – MURDER & CRIME CATEGORY
STUPID GRAVITY: A Street Level Mystery
What if you CAN'T go to the police?
Disgraced software engineer Liliane Dupuis is genius-level smart, wise in the way of sarcasm, and incurably socially inept. She’s also living in her car, a forty-year-old blue Mustang fastback with one primer gray fender. She’s on probation, having allowed a manipulative ex-boyfriend to drag her into a failed ATM hacking scheme. And she’s unemployed in 2010 when finding a job is tough even for those unburdened with a felony conviction. When Liliane witnesses the abduction of a little girl from a homeless shelter, she doesn’t figure her new bottom-rung reality carries the risk tolerance for getting involved.
With funds dwindling to desperation level, she uses a fake ID to land a job at a convenience store on a seamy stretch of Denver’s Colfax Avenue. Less than a week into her new salesclerk career, Liliane watches as the shelter kidnapper walks into her store. It’s not a coincidence, she knows. Just karma continuing to mess with her.
A call to the police might or might not get the abductor locked up, but the exposure of Liliane’s parole violation will absolutely land her on a Sheriff’s bus headed for the state pen. Instead, she must use her resourcefulness, hacking skills, and ruthlessly logical gray matter to track down the kidnapper and rescue the little girl.
