BOOK BITES: Forsaken Oath

I had the pleasure of meeting V.S. Kemanis at the holiday party for the New York Chapter of Mystery Writers of America this winter. She has a background as both an accomplished dancer and a criminal prosecutor. Her short fiction has been published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, The Crooked Road Volume 3 Anthology, The William & Mary Review, Lynx Eye and Thema. When I learned that the third novel in her Dana Hargrove Legal Mystery Series, FORSAKEN OATH (Opus Nine Books, April 20, 2016) was due out in April, I asked her to join me here to share a bite!

Who is your main character? What is she like?

Dana Hargrove is a prosecutor with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, juggling a stressful (but exciting!) career with the demands of her family life as a wife and mother. She’s a skilled litigator, dauntless, intelligent, and fair-minded, but she has her share of self-doubt and feels her vulnerabilities most acutely in moments of conflicting loyalties to family and career.

What would Dana Hargrove choose for her last meal?

Is Dana allowed to bring her husband Evan along (for dinner, I mean)? Dana would take Evan to the French brasserie they visited in the final chapter of HOMICIDE CHART and order the pan-seared rib eye with steak-frites and a smooth Cabernet to go with—the perfect celebratory food to mark a full, successful life.

How about you? What would you choose for your last meal?

I’m a pasta, vegetable, and dairy lover and would order cheese ravioli in vodka sauce with a crisp green salad and Turkey Hill ice cream for dessert, two scoops each of Original Vanilla and Dutch Chocolate. (I might just skip right to the dessert!)

Why should someone bite into FORSAKEN OATH?

FORSAKEN OATH, scheduled for release on April 30, is the third standalone Dana Hargrove legal mystery. Once again, Dana is caught at the intersection of family and career—a career that happens to involve an interesting array of criminal suspects, judges, attorneys, and investigators! The plot includes a murderer, a mortgage scammer, and a telemarketing shyster, with an underlying theme common to all of the Dana Hargrove novels: the internal conflict familiar to any career woman juggling family and professional obligations. I felt this conflict keenly in my career both in and out of the courtroom, and I draw on my years of experience in criminal law in writing these novels.

Do you have a recipe you’d like to share?

As busy professionals with young children, Dana and Evan do extra cooking on the weekends and reheat their meals for the family dinner hour on weekdays. In a scene from Forsaken Oath, Dana laments that it slipped her mind to make an after-hours phone call to her boss, District Attorney Patrick McBride, to report significant developments in a high-profile case—she was distracted at dinnertime, reheating lasagna for the family. Here is a delicious recipe Evan might prepare on the weekend. You can also add any other vegetables you like to the recipe:

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/11786/hearty-vegetable-lasagna/

I have to say,  vegetable lasagna is definitely one of my favorite things to eat. I have never attempted to make it but it is on my to-do list! And in another life (well, actually, in this one,) I seriously considered attending law school–and if I had, I think I would have become a prosecutor. I can’t wait to get to know Dana Hargrove better.

You can find learn more about V.S. Kemanis at her website www.vskemanis.com. And you can find FORSAKEN OATH on Amazon, on Goodreads and on Smashwords.

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