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Also by Caroline B. Cooney:

The Wrong Good Deed, May 2023
Paperback / e-Book
The Grandmother Plot, July 2021
Trade Size / e-Book
Before She Was Helen, May 2021
Trade Size / e-Book
Before She Was Helen, September 2020
Hardcover / e-Book
No Such Person, July 2015
Hardcover / e-Book

BEFORE SHE WAS HELEN
By: Caroline B. Cooney

Poisoned Pen Press
May 2021
On Sale: May 4, 2021
400 pages
ISBN: 1728239745
EAN: 9781728239743
Kindle: B082L5ZLNG
Trade Size / e-Book
Add to Wish List

Other Editions
Hardcover (September 2020)

Mystery Amateur Sleuth | Mystery Private Eye

"As Before She Was Helen opens, readers are drawn into what appears to be a light, retirement-community caper. But author Caroline B. Cooney quickly flips expectations upside-down in this deceptively dark mystery. Between old crimes and fresh murders, septuagenarian protagonist Clemmie faces an unspeakable fear that will keep readers hooked in this twisty whodunit."-Julie Hyzy, New York Times bestselling author

From the critically acclaimed, international bestselling author Caroline B. Cooney comes a domestic thriller perfect for fans of mystery books by Laura Lippman and Alice Feeney.

Her life didn't turn out the way she expected—so she made herself a new one

When Clemmie goes next door to check on her difficult and unlikeable neighbor Dom, he isn't there. But something else is. Something stunning, beautiful and inexplicable. Clemmie photographs the wondrous object on her cell phone and makes the irrevocable error of forwarding it. As the picture swirls over the internet, Clemmie tries desperately to keep a grip on her own personal network of secrets. Can fifty years of careful hiding under names not her own be ruined by one careless picture?

And although what Clemmie finds is a work of art, what the police find is a body. . . and she was the last person at the crime scene, where she left her fingerprints. Suddenly thrown into the heart of a twisted investigation, Clemmie finds herself the uncomfortable subject of intense scrutiny. And the bland, quiet life Clemmie has built for herself in her sleepy South Carolina retirement community comes crashing down as her dark past surges into the present.

From international bestselling author of The Face on the Milk Carton Caroline B. Cooney comes Before She Was Helen, an absorbing mystery that brings decades-old secrets to life and explores what happens when the lie you've been living falls apart and you're forced to confront the truth.