The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Surgical Murders: Book 5 by Laura Burke

Episode Date: September 9, 2024

Surgical Murders: Book 5 by Laura Burke https://amzn.to/47nLQzZ Lauraburkemysterywriter.com Three young women on a trip to a real estate seminar. They all turn up dead in three different towns but killed the same way. They were also planning one of the woman's wedding arrangements. They were from New York City and would be returning there after the seminar. They are found nude in a town park, but in different towns, killed the same way. No identification on the bodies. No clothing, no explanation as to why they were killed. Case is five years old and became a cold case by local police department chalking it up to they were prostitutes. Jolene wanted to solve this case closure to the families of these women. She knew there was more to this story.

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Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the big show. For 16 years, over 2,000 episodes, we bring you the Chris Voss Show. And, boy, what a wonderful journey it's been. Thanks for tuning in. I'm so miserable us today we'll be talking about her latest book surgical murders book five out may 22nd 2024 laura burke joins us on the show with us today we'll be talking about her latest book and all the other works that she's done she's always been a storyteller since childhood she's dreamed of becoming an author and now she sees her stories in print and her dream has become a reality she was since eight years old mysteries have been have been her passion, especially murder mysteries. So much after working for more than 20 years, she became a private investigator.

She worked in closed content with police officers and detectives on several closed case files with amazing results. She currently resides in Florida. Welcome to the show, Laura. How are you? Laura? Hey, I'm fine. How are you? I'm fine, I'm fine. How are you?

I'm fine as well. Glad to have you. And give us your dot coms. Where do you want people to find out more about you on the interwebs? They can look me up on my website, which is lauraburkemysterywriter.com. And that has all of my books listed. And it tells a little bit about me one of my hooks is is that i kill people for a living and i really enjoy it does your husband what's your husband think of

this does he keep one eye open at night when he sleeps yes he does he's already told his family that if anything happens to him to please look me up the plot will be in one of your books probably on what happens anything befalls him so give us a 30 000 overview of your new book surgical it was surgical murders it's it's like all of my books you never know who's going to be the killer i I leave that to the very last chapter in all of my novels. I don't even know who the killer is until I get to the last chapter. It's very interesting who shows up. Most of my books are about murder and they always have a streaming hook to them. You never know who is going to end up.

There is always one or two people that you would believe is the killer. But it turns out they're not the killer. So it's always an interesting transition, so to speak. Most of my novels, including this one, most of them are very old they are cold cases this one is about five years old and it involves three real estate agents and they are going to a seminar and they go to this seminar also as a vacation for them while one of them is planning her wedding the other two that are with her are her bridesmaids and they're helping her plan out her wedding and all of a sudden they turn up dead in three different towns on three different parks, and they're all nude.

So it's very interesting that the police don't investigate it more because they contribute these three girls as prostitutes. So when you're a prostitute in these little towns, they don't think anything about it. They feel that it's really not a concern to them. They're prostitutes. They slack it off and they don't really investigate it. And it turns out that they're not prostitutes. Oh, wow.

Two very elderly gentlemen who are doctors, and these are surgeons as well, Jolene feels that they're probably involved in the murder on these girls because everything is exactly alike. The surgical incisions on their neck are exactly the same. And they end up in a unique position in these parks. So you would think it's got to be a doctor. Who else would do this murder? Kind of methodical, huh? Yeah. You know, the police just

say, you know, oh, these are prostitutes. Wow. Imagine that happens a lot in real world stuff that you saw when you were working with detectives, maybe. Exactly. And, you know, it's really a shame that they feel like because they're prostitutes, why waste their time? Yeah, some lives shouldn't be worth more than others, technically. Exactly, you know, and that's what happens in the real world. They all feel prostitutes aren't worth the tinkers damn, so why go and waste my time?

Yeah. I think it's probably because it's a lot of work too, right? Because usually they don't have family connections. It's hard to find. There are harder mysteries to solve probably in real life because... It's not really hard. It's just that when you're a prostitute, why waste your time? Wow.

That's unfortunate. You know, prostitutes usually are women that run away from home as girls, and they end up on the street. And nobody cares. They don't care if they had a family. They don't care if they've got connections with anybody. They're useless in their eyes. But in this case, these people are in your book.

They're real estate agents as a livelihood, but their murders get ignored. I'd like to state for just the record that I did not do it, so I just want to make sure I'm clear of that. Are you sure? I have a guilty conscience for some reason. Do you have any medical training? I'm going to take the fifth on that one.

How many books do you have out now? have quite a few 18 18 wow prolific now are there are these books that are in a series where there's an ongoing protagonist or how do most of your books work they stand alone like on the mason, there are six books and they all contain the same detective that looks into these. Now, Jolene series, each book solves itself. And Jolene is the main character. Looking into The Model Murders, which is a book about young girls who usually have their pictures taken by certain people for the prom. And what she has done in The Model Murders is she clips these headlines out of these girls turning up dead. Now, these girls are all from well families, but they turn up dead, and she's been keeping a book with all of these clippings,

and her father didn't know anything about it until one day she was running late, left the book on her bed, and he happened to see it. And so when she came home from school, he asked her about it. And she told him what she's been doing. And she was in high school. So he said, you know, you really shouldn't waste your time about this. And it's just going to really disturb you, you know, forget it. She couldn't forget it. So when she graduated, she started investigating this. And when she started investigating it, it turned up that she was right. These girls were all being

killed by the same person. And she starts investigating how, where, and when. And she interviews the families of these girls, and they had no clue as to why these girls were being killed or who was killing them. Oh, wow. She solves this case. And it turns out that the killer has killed something like 25, 30 girls. Holy crap. And nobody has any clue as to why, where, or when.

Wow. So she knows to solve the problems. Yeah. So then she goes to the police academy, and she becomes an officer. That didn't solve her taste. She wanted more. So she started looking into cold cases, and she left the police force. So when she leaves the police force, there was a bunch of toy stores that their owners were being killed.

And these are like 10 years along. She finds out who the killer is. And then it's solved. The next one is the duffel bag murders. And these are all incidents where the killer has killed these guys, put them in a duffel bag and buried them. He or she buries them in a duffel bag and buried him. She buried him in a field or

abandoned house. These are like 10-15 years along. She looks into it and she solves that case. The next one is a boy in the box. That one's around 10 years old long too.

And she solves that case. So now she's working with the FBI because they have something like, I haven't checked lately, but they have something like 10 to 20,000 cold cases on file that have never been solved. Wow. She's working with the FBI. The FBI loves the way she's able to solve these cases, and they make her an honorary FBI agent. And they have given her two FBI agents to work with,

and they go out and they solve these cases which is amazing to the boss because he wants this whole basement cleared out of all these cold cases these cold cases run anywhere from 10 years to 25 years old and nobody has worked them you know it's it's amazing and this is true these cold cases aren't being worked by anyone because they have no clue as to where to start but joanne does and she starts looking into these cold cases and she takes her two buddies, which are FBI agents, and they work this case, these cases, from head to tail. She's able to solve these cases, and they love it because she is motivated in making these cases go away and giving rest to the families who have wondered all these years, what happened to my brother?

What happened to my sister? What happened to my child? And nobody knows. Nobody knows. So how did you become... These places are all old. Okay. So how did you get into writing?

When did you start writing? As you grew up, what influenced you and got you into being an author? How did you go down that journey? About 10 years ago, I had started a book, Rendezvous Key. And I pulled it out one day. And I said, I'm going to finish this book. And my husband at that time says, oh, you don't know what you're doing. I said, I'm going to finish it.

And he kind of laughed at me. And I finished it, and then I started another one. And then I was writing two at the same time. And I just found it so thrilling to be able to write and to take my, I guess you would say my anger and all of my stress out into my writing. I work five days a week. I do credentialing for doctors. And when I take on a new doctor, that's one of the first things I tell him. If you piss me off, I'm going to kill you off in one of my books.

So you better make sure you do everything I tell you to do. So I write on the weekends. And I have several doctors. I have 35 doctors that I do credentialing for. And if one of them has made me mad during the week, I kill him off on the weekend. And that makes all my stress away. I have a few authors on the show that they do that.

They tend to kill people off that they don't like in real life Yeah, exactly So when did you start writing? When did you start writing officially? Officially about 15 years ago is when I started And I started writing professionally about 10 years ago Nice And now you've got, was was 15 books under your belt?

18. 18. 18 books. 18 books under your belt. What a legacy. And what a great thing you're building. Now, is the same protagonist in all of them, or do you have series with different characters

that are the leads? With Mason's series, yes. I have one investigator who is a private eye, and then on Jolene's series, she's the main character, and she's a female, and a lot of people say females can't do anything, and that's totally wrong. Females are more in tuned with the problems of today's problems, and they have a heart where males, excuse my French, males kind of say, oh, we'll skip this for now and we'll come back to it, which they never do. And females aren't like that.

Females will dig and dig and dig until they have an answer to that problem. Males don't see it that way. That's an interesting perspective. and I'm sure you are the same way I would hope not so so in the book you know people go through the journey what do you hope people come away with after they've read the book wanting to read more they buy more books of course you want to yes One of my books called Black Orchid, I entered it into a contest with Reader's Favorite, and I won third place. Congratulations. And that was, I couldn't believe that I won third place when they have over 10,000 books entered into these contests.

That's extraordinary. It's just amazing to me that I won. I enter very few contests because I'm too busy doing other things. But it's very gratifying to me to be able to sit on the weekends and watch TV and watch murder mysteries and also write at the same time. I find it very satisfying.

Are the murder mysteries that you watch, are they some of the inspiration you get for your books? No, not really. You know, I try to watch some of these older ones, like Murder, She Wrote. Ah, yeah. And, you know, I look at that, and I say, okay, now why didn't she do this? Why didn't she do that? But she always solves the problem about the case on the very end scene. And that kind of led me to the Jolene series set. I wanted to do something on those lines to give people

the whole satisfaction of trying to solve the case themselves. So you leave it up to them. Most people don't know this, but Murder, She Wrote, Angela Lansbury, this is a joke I heard, so I don't think there's much to it. But, you know, evidently the city that she lived in, I forget the name of the little town, the tiny town that she lived in, Angela Lansbury, Jessica Fletcher, I guess was her name. But there was only like 3,000, 3,500 people in it, yet it seems to have had the highest murder rate of any city in the U.S. What my theory is, is

she was the serial killer of everyone on the show, and she just framed up people for it. There was too much murdering going on in that small town for, you know, I think she eventually would have ran out of residents to blame the killings on.

Well, you know, she also went to new york and philadelphia and she also went to california and everywhere she went there was always a murder to solve yeah but so did but so did you know bundy true i'm just telling jokes like some people get upset when they accuse angela lansbury jessica fletcher of being the serial killer on that show for 12 years but you know you kind of have to wonder i mean it was a real small town that she was in and boy there was a lot of murdering going on that was like murder capital of the u.s evidently you know that kept the dock busy yeah they might have all been in on it then. Maybe they were They would have all had to go fishing every day

and that would have been very boring. Yeah, yeah. Said the juice of murdering. Laura, this has been fun to have you on and stuff. Tell people, is there anything in the future coming up? Any future books you're working on? I'm writing one now. It's a part of Jolene's series

and it's called The Red Flag Mystery Red Flag Murders and everybody asks me where did I come up with that title most of my titles come to me in my dreams and when I kind of get stumped my characters tell me what to write

they tell me what I should do where I should go and what I should look up and they tell me what to write. They tell me what I should do, where I should go, and what I should look up. And they tell me what the title of my next book is. And they've already given me the title for two more books in the Jolene series. So I've got to hurry up and get this one finished so I

can start on the next one. So Laura, give us your.com as we go out. Tell people where they can find you on the internet. They can find me on lauraburkemysterywriter.com. And there's a place there that they can contact me. They can send their wishes to me, or they can send their grievance about my writing. Either way. There you go.

I welcome all comments. I'm sure they love your work. So, Laura, thank you for being on the show. Thanks, Simonis, for tuning in. You're very welcome. And if there is any directors or publishers out there that want to make a movie, please get in touch with me because I have a lot of good ideas about all of my books. A lot of good books.

So, Laura, thanks for being on the show. Thanks for tuning in. Order the book wherever fine books are sold. Surgical Murderous, Book 5, May 22, 24. Thanks to my audience for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. And we'll see you guys next time.