The Rayanne, Noor and Sandy Fan Club

Rayanne, Noor and Sandy are the three right-brained detectives of the William D. Skees mystery series.

Rayanne is a portrait artist, a drawing teacher and an accidental detective, whose studio is in Old Town, Alexandria, Virginia, just across the Potomac River from Washington, D. C.

Rayanne and her sidekick, Noor, a born again, tough love lesbian, are confronted with a series of murders in the Old Town artists' community that the police want to write off as suicides. Rayanne's only weapons against the murderer are her intuitions, her very skeptical best friend, and Noor's lover, Sandy, a killer ex-Marine.

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Volume I — Death Picks a Blue Palette

(available through Amazon.com and BarnesAndNoble.com)

Opening paragraph - chapter one:

"In the mirror one breast hung slightly lower than the other. Rayanne looked at it critically, working the tip of her tongue against her cheek. Definitely lower, she decided. On her easel she sketched in two perfectly matching breasts, nicely rounded and equidistant from the shoulders."

From chapter seven:

"As if a monster out of her nightmares was coming at Elba, she twisted away from Rayanne and threw herself at the window, hands out in front of her. There was a crash. The windowsill caught her knees and her upper body toppled forward—out the window. Rayanne's memory flashed on falling glas and buttocks, the soles of bare feet and toes. Forever at that moment, and forever."

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Volume II — Death Chooses Aquamarine

(also available through Amazon.com and BarnesAndNoble.com)

Opening and final paragraphs - chapter one:

"The sun had moved. Rayanne Tellsworth swiveled around and adjusted the mirror she had fastened to the guardrail on Carioca’s bow, so she could see her naked body full length. In today’s light her all-over tan suited her. Her full head of hair was now a light bright gold and elsewhere the hairs were golden brown. It was a good look for her and the painting over which she had labored was coming along nicely. She planned to call it something like “Nude on a Bowsprit,” or maybe “The Foredeck.”

...

"She felt, then heard, the soft thump of something against the hull, somewhere amidships on the port side. She secured her paints and easel and went to check. There was something floating in the water. She leaned out over the lifelines for a better look. It was a man’s body, clad only in swim trunks. Even from the lifelines she could see the immense round hole in the back of his neck at the base of the skull. “Shit,” she said."