“...very timely,... Liz and her friends make good company. ..engaging mix of traditional cozy elements with a terrorist suspense story.” —

— Barbara Bibel, Booklist, October 1, 2006   Read the review

A Liz Rooney Mystery

One afternoon during play practice, the dramatics teacher at Manhattan’s prestigious Chadwick Academy, Marva Malin is found strangled and laying in a pool of blood on the auditorium floor, having been thrown over the balcony rail.

Liz Rooney, an assistant to the coroner, is on the scene, listening to the faculty’s conversations and trying to find clues for her fiancé, NYPD homicide detective Ike Eichle.

For all her efforts, she is kidnapped by terrorists, members of an underground al Qaeda cell in Manhattan. While held hostage for the release of their leader who is imprisoned in Iraq by the U.S. military, Liz discovers a link between one of the terrorists and the school murder.

With the U.S. government’s refusal to negotiate with terrorists, Liz fears her time is running out, but a bizarre stroke of luck leads to her rescue and the capture of the terrorists.

The information Liz picked up while captive proves useful to Ike, helping him eliminate the murder suspects one by one until the killer is caught.

Dorothy P. O’Neill, a native of Staten Island, New York, has lived in Greensboro, North Carolina for the past sixteen years. A former newspaper columnist and advertising copywriter, Dorothy had numerous poems and light verse published in Good Housekeeping and other leading magazines before her first novel, a romance, was published by AVALON in 1993. AVALON published three more of her romances before she switched to writing the Liz Rooney mystery series.

Grim Finale is the sixth book in Liz Rooney Mystery Series for AVALON.

Avalon Mysteries by Dorothy P. O’Neill:
The Liz Rooney Mystery Series
GRIM FINALE
FINAL NOTE
SMOKE COVER
ULTIMATE DOOM
FATAL PURCHASE
DOUBLE DECEPTION

Avalon Romances by Dorothy P. O’Neill:
HEART ON HOLD
"L" IS FOR LOVE