Tessa B. Dick's The Man Without a Past

Author of The Owl in Daylight, prospectively volume three of her late husband Philip K. Dick’s incomplete VALIS trilogy, Remembering Firebright, a memoir of her time with him, and 2012 and Beyond: Ancient Secrets and Mysteries, Tessa B. Dick first came to my attention after I’d written my attempt at a profile of PKD and she left a comment taking issue with my perhaps undue accreditation of one of his biographers. When I reviewed Michael Bishop’s Philip K. Dick is dead, alas, she left another one encouraging me to read The Owl in Daylight. I ordered a copy and was very impressed with its equivalence to the best parts of Phil’s work when I read it.

Fans of Sue Grafton's novels will enjoy Tessa’s latest, a murder mystery called The Man Without A Past starring a reluctant lady gumshoe. An old sweetheart from Lavinia Stout’s college days named Mark Bell requests a simple background check on some of his employees, but soon Livvy’s off on a paranoiac odyssey into environmental pollution, mysterious men in black suits and murder. An electronically disguised phone call warns her not to pursue the Bell Mining matter, if she values her health and safety. The only way to get her life in order is to solve this mind-blistering murder.

Tessa maintains a regularly updated blog. Among many modern writers (including myself, with mixed results) she’s so far chosen to bypass the traditional route of submission then delay before acceptance or rejection. Her excellent self-published novels are available at Amazon dot com.