Christmas in Berkeley is grim for Helen Black, Private Investigator. Clients are scarce and her lover doesn't like Helen's new career. Then Helen lands her first important case: a wealthy lesbian whose lover is a murder suspect. Pat Welch's first novel.

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Book by Welch, Pat

A Helen Black mystery, Helen's Great Aunt has passed on and has left Helen her house; so Helen travels back to Mississippi from her town of Berkeley, leaving behind friend Freida, only to find murder, secrets and mysteries that she must solve.

When a community health clinic is beseiged by the anti-abortion protesters, Helen Black's ex-lover begs her to help. Realizing that the only way to get information is from the inside, Helen goes under cover and infiltrates the extremist group.

A Helen Black Mystery When downsized corporate executive and closeted lesbian Leslie Merrick takes a nose dive from an eighth-story window, the cops jump to the conclusion that her death is a suicide. Could the woman's fall have been accidental? Or is Helen Black being set up to take the biggest fall of all?

With their relationship on shaky ground, Helen and Alison leave for a weekend at a casino. Will the shell-shocked PI be able to forget the mental and physical wounds that have made her question her beliefs? But a cold-blooded killer is betting that Helen can be lured back into the game.

When the death of her beloved Uncle Loy draws Helen Black back to Mississippi, she finds herself in the midst of another mystery—and this one involves her own family. Helen wonders whether Uncle Loy\`s last words might have explained the photo she finds of Uncle Loy with a beautiful woman or the sudden apperance of corporate lawyers offering Aunt Edna what appears to be hush money. These strange events set Helen on the trail of a conspiracy that grows deeper and darker as she unravels the connections between human need, corporate greed, sex, death, and power. Helen, too, is unraveling, unable to resist either booze, risky sex, or a trail she\`s been warned not to follow, her unpredictable behavior risks the lives of the very people she would like to protect, as well as the love of the one woman she still trusts. Ultimately, Helen must decide whether getting to the bottom of a mystery is worth hitting bottom herself.

Helen Black is out on parole near the small Mississippi town she escaped in her youth. As she struggles to put her life back together and make friends with the residents of Tynedale, Helen is pulled into the seamy underside of this ostensibly placid town. But it’s the one place she can’t go—the seamy underside will lead Helen straight back to prison. Then a brutal murder rips the town apart. Everyone, from a scheming ex-cellmate to a new police detective with a chip on his shoulder, seem to align themselves against Helen. But it was Helen who found the body and to save herself, she must now find the killer.

After serving time in prison, former cop Helen Black returns home to Berkeley, California, hoping to start over... but her new life doesn’t look very promising. Struggling through her days with dull temp jobs, she meets Alice one night at a local bar. A few days after their brief encounter, Helen stops by Alice’s apartment – only to find the woman dead. Soon the police become involved – and her former partner, Manny, treats her like the criminal he thinks she has become. Of course it doesn’t help that his wife just left him for another woman – and he thinks it’s all Helen’s fault… With the world around her spinning, Helen is painfully struggling to find security in her old turf, and wonders if she will ever be able to put the past behind her.