Crimes of Design: A Patrick MacKenna Mystery

To save his beleaguered city, his career, his family and his very life,
Patrick MacKenna must confront a ruthless saboteur and killer

When architect and city planner Patrick MacKenna discovers the body of the city manager, his staunchest advocate, in the controversial new city-within-the city he has planned in the protected floodplain of the Missouri River, within hours he’s a murder suspect. He must help solve the crime to clear his name. But his judgment is clouded by his lingering guilt over the death of his wife in an accident during a Christmas Eve ice storm, blinding him to the solution of the case.

As attacks against the infrastructure increase, Patrick, a widower with an eye for beautiful women and fine old things, must outwit the law and navigate a nether world of unseen actors, questionable protectors of the public trust. He is aided by dedicated, sexy FBI Agent Bobbi Romano and Meg Stewart, the developer’s project manager, who must overcome her own troubled past to help solve the mystery and win his heart. When Patrick suspects that the plot’s masterminds are people he once trusted, he learns the greatest threat to the built infrastructure is not nature, but man himself.

PRAISE FOR CRIMES OF DESIGN

Peter Green’s Crimes of Design—a "flood-plain noir" mystery—weaves a complex tale of murder, eco-terrorism, love, lust and betrayal… Set in St. Louis at the confluence of the great Mississippi and Missouri rivers, the novel dredges up fascinating facts about the rivers' pivotal roles in Midwestern Americana— wetlands law, floods, barge traffic, levees, locks, pumping stations, agricultural commodities trading, corn futures, and how they all interrelate. —Rick Skwiot, Hemingway First Novel Award-winner and author of FAIL

Politics, murder, and the river. Green knows St. Louis, all right. Crimes of Design is a tightly plotted and told urban mystery featuring plenty of action and twists and turns. Who knew living in St. Louis was such an adventure?
—John Lutz, Edgar- and Shamus-Award-winning Author of Serial.

Peter Green’s latest techno-thriller Crimes of Design weaves a tale of murder, intrigue, romance and suspense … The geographical terrain, the history of the Midwest and his extensive knowledge of the inner workings of the federal government contracting system, the private construction business and the United States Army Corps of Engineers… achieves the right mixture of everyday life, mystery and technical detail.
—Colonel (Ret) Michael R. Morrow, Former District Engineer, St Louis District, U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, Author of Kuwait Journal, an illustrated diary from the first Gulf War.