CRIME WRITER
by Vinnie Hansen
September 22 – October 17, 2025 Virtual Book Tour
Hi, everyone!
Today I am sharing my Feature Post and Book Review for CRIME WRITER by Vinnie Hansen on this Partners In Crime Virtual Book Tour.
Below you will find a book description, my mini book review, an excerpt from the book, the author’s bio and social media links, and a Promoamp giveaway. Enjoy!
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Book Description
In the peaceful California coast city of Playa Maria, CRIME WRITER ZOEY KOZINSKI joins a local police officer for a ride-along in hopes of breaking through her writer’s block. But during a routine traffic stop, the cop is shot, the victim of a brutal homicide.
Zoey realizes she is the only witness and the number one target on the killer’s hit list. PTSD kicks in, sending her into a tailspin. It doesn’t help that she lives on an illegal cannabis farm and that her estranged mother has just arrived. Even the police officer’s widow points a finger at the writer, claiming she was a distraction, and the police department knew it.
Lurking on the fringes is a man who stopped briefly at the crime. Good Samaritan or sinister suspect? For her safety, Zoey needs to find out.
Crime Writer
Genre: Suspense
Published by: Level Best Books
Publication Date: September 9, 2025 (ebook)
Number of Pages: 266 (paperback)
ISBN: 979-8-89820-027-5 (paperback)
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My Mini Book Review
RATING: 4 out of 5 Stars
CRIME WRITER by Vinnie Hansen is an immersive crime thriller where the reader knows who the killer is and what he is doing to cover his tracks, but the interest, twists, and action are all centered around the protagonist, a crime writer and musician named Zoey Kozinski.
The red-headed and feisty Zoey witnesses the murder of the police officer she is doing a ride-along with during a routine traffic stop. The killer knows there is a witness and the drug trafficker he works for tells him he must eliminate her. With PTSD from the incident, the arrival of her estranged mother she has been hiding from, the cop’s widow who blames Zoey and wants revenge, and a man who appeared at the scene of the crime and keeps popping up in her life, Zoey needs to unravel what is happening and who to trust before she ends up dead.
This story starts out appearing to be very straight forward, but the more you learn, the more twisted and anxiety inducing the story becomes. Zoey is interesting and Ms. Hansen’s writing brings her to life with all her problems. The ending was not what I was expecting, but it is satisfying. For me, this was an interesting change in perspective from the usual crime thriller/police procedural mystery.
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Excerpt
One
Day 1 – early evening
Heat from the Mobile Data Transmitter radiated onto Zoey Kozinski’s arm. The interior of the patrol car cooked, muggy and close. September brought the hottest weather to the central coast of California, anxiety about fires flaring as the oak leaves curled and undergrowth crisped. Thankfully, Officer Austin kept the windows of the patrol car open even as the sun started to set.
“Must be boiling with your vest.”
“Better to sweat than bleed.” Austin’s profile was sharp angles, pointed nose, strong chin.
“How much does that thing weigh?” Zoey already knew, but the officer didn’t seem talkative. She needed to crack the façade and dig out some grist to apply to Officer Horne, the character in her book. Her stalled, barely-started book.
“Six pounds.”
Officer Austin rolled along Scenic Drive, a main thoroughfare through Playa Maria County. Zoey wished they could listen to music, something to go with driving on a sultry evening, maybe Ella Fitzgerald’s “Summertime.” Instead, the police radio spat information, filling awkward silence. Zoey jotted down that a list of stolen cars was tucked on the left side of his dash. She’d chosen a night shift, hoping for a modicum of action but nothing on the radio stirred Austin’s interest.
“How do you feel about ride-alongs?” She flipped her legal pad and the printed-out opening pages of her manuscript winged to the floor. All two of them. A whopping three hundred ten words. She bent down to retrieve them.
“It’s part of our Community Policing.” Austin kept his focus forward. “To increase civilian awareness of what police work entails.”
She didn’t bother to write down the canned response.
Austin must be a rookie to receive the crappy assignment of hauling a ride-along, but he didn’t look like one. Silver highlighted his short hair. Older than her fictional Officer Horne. Her protagonist Horne should be young, freshly free of his training wheels, a more credible character to rush toward a terrible mistake after witnessing the shooting of a fellow officer.
In the margin of the legal pad, she scribbled: A hot-head. Temper=hubris. Too eager to prove himself?
Then she wrote Stan and put a question mark after it. The name of the murdered officer in her manuscript had appeared in a magician’s puff of smoke, typed by her fingers before she was conscious of a choice. Not a common name for guys of her generation, the lost kids born between Generation X and the Millennials. The name had merit—easy to pronounce, but not overly used. Why had it popped into her head?
She slipped her pen through her tangle of red hair and scratched her scalp.
Austin shot her a glance, maybe thinking she didn’t know she was using the ink end.
“Writing off the top of your head?”
She smiled slightly. Witty for a police officer.
He quirked a brow. “Making headlines?” His tone was dry. No smile. Was he being funny or busting her balls?
Zoey tapped the legal pad. Her next question wasn’t on it, but Austin’s age and his quips begged for it.
“What did you do before becoming a law enforcement officer?”
Long fingers curled around the wheel, maneuvering the vehicle through the rush-hour clog of Scenic Drive. He scanned the lanes of traffic and sidewalks long enough that she thought he wasn’t going to answer.
“I was a teacher.”
“Really?” Her voice squeaked with unveiled surprise. Heat rose up her face. With her coloring, there was no playing off a blush. When she was a kid, her Grosse Pointe classmates had pinned her with the nickname Tomato.
“High-school history.” In the parking lot, he’d offered a firm handshake and introduced himself formally as Officer Austin, although he’d added with a trace of humor ‘at your service.’ Over six-feet with ropy muscles, he was a bit old for her, maybe forty-five, but a hottie, nonetheless.
“That’s a strange career trajectory.”
“Not really. In both jobs you deal with a lot of young punks.”
As part of the outreach program, he probably was not supposed to refer to members of the community as punks. She was making progress.
“In policing I bet you have more flexibility about how you deal with punks?”
His lip curled, but he didn’t respond.
“So why the career move?”
“In teaching, the more you work, the less you’re paid,” he said. “Police work offers time-and-a-half for overtime. Ten-hour shifts and four-day work weeks. More money and time for my family.”
“Kids?”
“Three.”
She felt a twinge of disappointment. Her sex life had been reduced to her Magic Wand, and Austin wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, so a bit of fantasy had slipped under her normally guarded door. Since she didn’t want a relationship, a hot cop could be the ticket. Married killed that idea.
And three kids! With the world’s exploding population and global climate change, that was self-indulgent. One of her least favorite character flaws—in reality. In fiction, it was a great character flaw.
“My wife’s the one who should have made the career move to cop,” Austin volunteered. “She’s a tiger. Can outshoot me.” He shook his head in admiration.
Another twinge. She had a serious weakness for men who complimented women in absentia.
Zoey touched the cool metal of the AR15 propped in front of the passenger seat. “This is some serious fire power.”
The creases in his uniform lifted infinitesimally, a hint of a shrug. “You should see what they have on the street.”
She ran her finger down her list of questions. Nothing so far had gotten the juices flowing. “What kind of handgun do you carry?”
“Smith & Wesson. Officers with more seniority get Berettas. The most senior officers have Glocks.” Jealousy tinged his voice. “But if you want a better gun, you can buy one. I’m looking at a Glock.”
The crackling voice of dispatch relayed a report of a middle-aged black male dealing drugs in Playa Maria Park.
Austin swung off Scenic onto a street that cut along the seedier edge of downtown, where the homeless population dwarfed the number of university students. He slowed at the park.
Dusk had sifted into darkness, but streetlights illuminated the perimeter of the grass. Young men played basketball in a well-lit court. A lone man leaning against a light pole straightened at the cruiser’s arrival. Austin put the windows up, parked the car, and plucked a wood baton from the base of his door. “Remain in the vehicle.”
Another patrolman rolled up and joined him. She noted details. Suspect’s dreadlocks glisten in bluish light. Tan pants bag around skinny legs.
Austin questioned the man, while the other officer patted him down and dipped into the pockets of his army-fatigue jacket. With the window closed, Zoey sweated.
In the end, the man bumped away and swaggered toward the basketball court.
Talking together, the officers watched him, then turned in the direction of the vehicle. Austin nodded. The other man laughed. They were talking about her. The inside of the cruiser steamed like a sauna. Austin was letting her marinate in a patina of sweat.
Zoey opened the passenger door, which prompted Austin to step toward the cruiser. Before he plopped into his seat, he thunked his baton into its spot.
“I asked the suspect if we could search him and he said no,” he started before Zoey even asked. “But he has a Search Clause.” Austin cleaned his hands with foam sanitizer. “That’s a bargain he made for probation. He relinquished his right to probable cause.”
She scribbled the information. This was good stuff, strengthening her knowledge of the law.
“But you didn’t find anything?”
“Maybe he sold out.”
Dry humor. Deadpan delivery. Her favorite. To curtail a blush, she cast her eyes to the pocket of his door.
“Don’t most officers these days carry whip-batons?”
He gave her a look.
Amazing eyes—way greener than her own. He yanked the baton from its spot and held it across his lap, the top grazing her thigh.
Phallic symbol, for sure. The air inside the car shifted subtly.
“See all those nicks?” he said. “My T.O. gave this to me, said the riff-raff on the street notice the dents. They’re mostly from getting in and out of the car, but hey,” he returned the baton to the door pocket, “they don’t know that.”
He gave his hand a second squirt of the sanitizer. “I tell you one part of this job I don’t like. The grime. You’d have to get up close to appreciate how much that guy . . . how grubby he was.” Austin started the car. “Tell you the truth, I’m more afraid of an accidental needle poke than a gunshot.”
“Was he dealing?”
“I imagine.” Austin put down the windows. Fresh air rushed into the compartment. “He doesn’t have any other means of income.”
The radio called Austin to roust a panhandler near the entrance to the freeway. Civilian complaint. Austin zoomed back up to Scenic. At the intersection before the freeway entrance, he stopped at a red light with the rest of the traffic. The girl panhandling on the median spotted the cruiser, folded her sign, and meandered down the sidewalk.
Austin turned and rolled along the street across from the girl. In spite of a curvaceous figure packed into tight jeans, with her wavy brown hair hitched into pigtails she looked all of fifteen. The girl ignored them.
Zoey twisted toward Austin. “Are you going to stop?”
“She’s not doing anything illegal now. She didn’t even jaywalk.” He sped up. “We got her off the median.”
“Yup. Sure did.” He knew, and she knew, that as soon as they were out of sight, the girl would return to her spot.
How do they negotiate spots? She wrote. First come, first served?
If she asked Austin about the girl—did he know her—what was her story—she sensed he’d blow off the questions. The police department had picked the wrong officer to give ride-alongs. Austin lacked a gregarious, empathetic personality.
Zoey tried to unpack how she’d arrived at this conclusion. Maybe because he’d chosen policing over teaching. Police work had to be more frustrating than high school teaching, certainly less rewarding.
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Author Bio
A Claymore and Silver Falchion finalist, Vinnie Hansen is the author of the Carol Sabala mystery series, the novels LOSTART STREET, ONE GUN, and CRIME WRITER, as well as over seventy published short works.
She is a member of Mystery Writers of American, Sisters in Crime, and the Short Mystery Fiction Society. A retired high-school English teacher, she lives with her husband and the requisite cat in Santa Cruz, CA.
Social Media Links
www.vinniehansen.com
Amazon Author Profile
Goodreads
BookBub – @vinnie5
Purchase Links
Amazon – https://pictbooks.tours/BbIBvA5Y
Goodreads – https://pictbooks.tours/7Y6wWGfA
PICT Tour Page – https://pictbooks.tours/nmCGXK98
PICT Giveaway Page – https://pictbooks.tours/zVgaCSjk
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PROMOAMP GIVEAWAY
https://www.promoamp.com/c/crime-writer-by-vinnie-hansen
