Jake Powell came to Rattlesnake Bend to disappear.

The dying North Texas lake town was the perfect place to outrun his past: no questions, no connections, no reminders of the life he left behind in Massachusetts. He kept his head down, worked for a local woodworker, drank too much at the Cock 'N' Bull, and tried not to think about April Hunter?the woman he abandoned without explanation years ago.

Then April shows up in town wearing a yellow rain slicker.

Less than twenty-four hours later, she's dead.

With the sheriff convinced he's guilty, Jake starts digging for answers on his own. What begins as a murder investigation spirals into a maze of family secrets, corporate corruption, anonymous threats, and lies buried for decades. The deeper Jake digs, the clearer it becomes that April's death wasn't random.

It was personal.

And the truth waiting at the center is darker than anything Jake imagined?dark enough to destroy what remains of his life.

Murder is Personal is a contemporary noir mystery-thriller filled with sharp humor, dangerous secrets, and a haunting small-town atmosphere where everybody knows your name?and nobody tells the truth.

BJ Condike writes mystery fiction featuring ordinary people caught in extraordinary circumstances. He draws inspiration from small-town communities, hidden histories, and the secrets people keep from those closest to them. BJ Condike has won several short story contests, including twice placing in the top 1% of Writers Digest's Short-Short Story Contest. His stories appear in several anthologies published by Granbury Writers' Bloc, Sisters in Crime North Dallas, and the Key West Writer's Guild. BJ completed The Writers Path creative writing program at Southwestern University in Dallas. He is vice president of the Key West Writers Guild and is a member of Sisters in Crime and the Mystery Writers of America.When BJ is not writing or reading, he's plying the waters of the Florida Keys in his boat Sea-Quel with his wife ML Condike and their Corgi Sophie.