Incentive for Death A Novel

They all sold their life insurance policies to the same company— and now they’ re all dead. Mac and Oliver are on the case.
On a beautiful spring morning in Washington, D.C., a high-profile attorney is found dead in his office. McDermott “ Mac” Burke and Oliver Shaw, homicide investigators for the Metropolitan Police Department, are called to investigate. There appear to be no signs of foul play, but there is also no obvious sign of a natural cause of death.

The detectives are perplexed until the medical examiner notices a tiny pin prick on the lawyer’ s neck and theorizes that the man was injected with succinylcholine— aka “ sux” — which is a common horse tranquilizer that dissipates quickly in the body.

As Mac and Oliver begin to look further, they discover that the lawyer had sold his life insurance policy to a large viatical company. Then, they realize that more deaths under mysterious circumstances have occurred among those who’ ve sold their policies to the same company.

James Spoonhour is a lifelong reader turned mystery writer. A graduate of the University of Nebraska and Georgetown University, James has worked in Special Investigations for the Air Force and was once assigned to the Pentagon. He then practiced civil litigation and appellate law in Orlando, Florida, and was later a law professor at the Loyola University School of Law in New Orleans. Incentive for Death is his debut novel. James is an avid croquet player and lives in Pinehurst, North Carolina.