Meet Tai Randolph & Trey Seaver

couple border.jpg

She's just inherited a Civil War-themed gun shop in Kennesaw, Georgia, where owning a gun is not only encouraged, it's required by law. A former tour guide from the Georgia Lowcountry, Tai is smart, strong, a little too curious for her own good, and she's got a knack for investigation.

And then there's Trey, the ex-SWAT cop with Krav Maga expertise and a Ferrari. He’s a security consultant who doesn’t appreciate amateurs, especially not the sleuthing variety. But to tell you any more about him would spoil the story. 

Within these pages, you'll find hustlers and heroes, rednecks and senators, strippers and socialites. There's kissing and cussing, car chases and close calls.

If you like your mysteries complex, with a little whiplash humor and a lot of slightly crooked heart, then please give Tai Randolph and company a read. Thank you!

♦ ♦ ♦

Pro tip: if you’d like to read the books and stories in narrative order (not necessarily the order I wrote them in, but according to the progression of the events in the series) you can find that list HERE.

 

The Dangerous Edge of Things (#1)

Available in e-book (2nd edition) and print (1st edition). Find it online or at an independent bookstore near you.

Tai Randolph thinks inheriting a ramshackle gun shop is her biggest headache—until she finds a murdered corpse in her brother’s driveway. Even worse, her supposedly respectable brother begins behaving in decidedly non-innocent ways, like fleeing to the Bahamas and leaving her with both a homicide in her lap and the pointed suspicions of the Atlanta police directed her way.

Suddenly, she has to worry about clearing her own name, not just that of her wayward sibling, and a shop chock-full of firearms doesn’t help matters. Complicating her search for answers is Trey Seaver, field agent for Phoenix, an exclusive corporate security firm hired to investigate the crime. Trey is fearless, focused, and—much to Tai’s dismay—utterly impervious to bribes, threats and clever deceptions. Still in recovery from the car accident that left him cognitively and emotionally damaged, Trey has constructed a world of certainty and routine. He has powerful people to answer to, and the last thing he wants is an unpredictable stranger “detecting” on Phoenix turf.

Tai’s inquiry leads her from the cold-eyed glamour of Atlanta’s adult entertainment scene to the gilded treachery of Tuxedo Road. Potential suspects abound, including violent stalkers, vengeful sisters, and a paparazzo with a taste for meth. But it takes another murder—and threats to her own life—to make Tai realize that to solve this crime, she has to trust the most dangerous man she’s ever met.

“The Dangerous Edge of Things is a tangled tale: incredibly entertaining, well-constructed, and chock full of interesting characters. Tina Whittle is a welcome addition to the crime fiction genre, and The Dangerous Edge of Things is the beginning of a very promising, lighthearted mystery series.”
—Renee Fountain, New York Journal of Books

Darker Than Any Shadow (#2)

The dog days of summer have arrived, and Tai Randolph is feeling the heat. Running her uncle’s gun shop is more demanding than she ever imagined. Her best friend Rico is competing for a national slam poetry title. And Atlanta is overrun with hundreds of fame-hungry performance poets clogging all the good bars.

She’s also got her brand-new relationship with corporate security agent Trey Seaver to deal with. SWAT-trained and rule-obsessed, Trey has a brain geared for statistics and flow charts, not romance. And while Tai finds him irresistibly fascinating, dating a human lie detector who can kill with his bare hands is a somewhat precarious endeavor.

And then just when she thinks she might get a handle on things, one of Rico’s fellow poets is murdered . . . and Rico becomes the prime suspect.

Tai pushes up her sleeves and comes to his defense with every trick in her book—a little lying here, a little snooping there. Trey wants her off the case immediately. So does Rico. Every poet in Atlanta has a secret, it seems, and one of them is willing to kill to keep theirs quiet.

Will Tai’s relationship with Trey survive another foray into amateur sleuthing? And even more importantly, will she?

“A poetry slam makes an unlikely blood sport, but when Tai Randolph is around, bodies seem to appear. . . . In the second in this series, after The Dangerous Edge of Things, feisty Tai shows her emotional side. A brisk and smartly written entry in what is shaping up to be a winning series.”
—Michele Leber for Booklist

Blood, Ash and Bone (#3)

Tai Randolph doesn’t want to hear about homicide. She’s had enough of the dark and the dangerous, and decides some time out of Atlanta is exactly what she needs to put the recent spate of corpses behind her. It‘s an idyllic vision—selling her wares at the Savannah Civil War Expo, attending a few re-enactments, perhaps a little romantic rendezvousing with Trey, who has agreed to put aside the corporate security agent routine and join her for a long weekend in her hometown.

But in the South, the past is never past. It tends to rise again.

In Tai’s case, it shows up as her tattooed heartbreaker of an ex-boyfriend, desperate for her help. He spins a tale of betrayal, deceit, and a stolen Civil War artifact that Tai agrees to help him recover. Suddenly, Trey’s on the case too, representing a competing—and well-moneyed—client with eyes on the same mythical prize. As the lovers square off against each other, Tai discovers that her complicated boyfriend makes an even more intriguing adversary, revealing a ferociously competitive streak under his cool Armani exterior.

But where there’s money, there’s usually murder, this time involving the KKK and Tai’s unapologetically unreconstructed kinfolk. As she unravels the clues to a 150-year-old mystery, she digs up secrets from her own past—and Trey’s—forcing a confrontation with a ruthless killer, and with her own willingness to do whatever it takes to save everything that matters.

“Tina Whittle’s . . . novels are a mix of Pat Conroy writing and Dashiell Hammett storytelling. In Tai Randolph she has created a unique and fascinating heroine, and with Blood, Ash and Bone, Whittle has established herself as one of the top mystery writers working today.”
— Robert Dugoni, New York Times Best-selling Author ofThe Conviction
 

Deeper Than the Grave (#4)

It’s taken almost a year, but Tai Randolph finally has her new life together. She’s running a semi-successful Atlanta gun shop catering to Civil War re-enactors. Her relationship with the sexy if somewhat security-obsessed Trey Seaver is going smoothly. Most importantly, there’s not a single corpse on her horizon, and her previously haphazard existence is finally stable.

But not for long.

When a tornado scatters the skeletal remains of a Confederate soldier, Tai is asked to assist with the recovery effort. It’s a job her late Uncle Dexter would have relished, as does Tai, especially when she discovers a jumble of bones in the Kennesaw Mountain underbrush.

Her problem? The skeleton is not the one she’s looking for.

Her search reveals a more recent murder, with her deceased uncle at the top of the suspect list. As Tai struggles to clear Dexter’s name—and save the shop he left her—she digs up more than old bones. Deadly secrets also lie buried in the red Georgia clay.

Tai realizes there’s a murderer on the loose, a clever one who has tried to conceal the crimes of the present in the stories of the past. And when the killer’s crosshairs center on her, Tai must risk her own life to unravel two mysteries—one from a previous century, one literally at her doorstep.

“Dark, compelling and relentless—Whittle’s street smarts and wry humor combine for a taut and tense tale starring one of mystery’s sexiest couples. Smoldering, sinister, and consistently entertaining!”
— Hank Phillippi Ryan, Agatha, Anthony, and Mary Higgins Clark Awards winner
 

Reckoning and Ruin (#5)

Tai Randolph has several anniversaries under her belt. A year running the Civil War gun shop she inherited with its busy schedule of reenactments. A year together with Trey, her sexy if somewhat challenging ex-SWAT lover. A year of confronting a checkered list of ruffians and outright villains, mostly now put behind bars, including her estranged cousin Jasper, the leader of a white militia splinter group too violent for even the Klan.

Tai is determined to keep her amateur sleuthing in the past, not just for her sake, but for Trey's. But before she can pop the champagne, Jasper’s back, and he’s got a fancy new lawyer and a diabolical scheme sure to ruin both her and Trey.

Soon she’s deep in familiar troubles—a missing ex-boyfriend, a creepily literate stalker, a passel of stolen money—and back in Savannah, the hometown she’d hoped to keep forever in her rear-view mirror. She's forced to confront her messily unresolved past, including an uncomfortable reunion with her Uncle Boone, who's keeping secrets he'd rather take to his grave than reveal.

As a killer closes in, Tai has to decide if discovering the truth will be her redemption or her ruin. And she gets one chance to get it right.

“This is a fine murder mystery that does all the things it should do, opening special windows on character, behavior, legal issues, and investigative procedure in ways that distinguish it from others in the genre. For all that, the reader’s journey inside of the relationship between Tai and Trey, so fraught with the possibility of disaster, so filled with longing, is the solder that binds the pieces together and also the novel’s beating heart.”
— Philip K. Jason for Southern Literary Review

Necessary Ends (#6)

Tai Randolph is no stranger to solving mysteries. With a taste for danger and a talent for amateur sleuthing, she has helped put an assortment of murderers behind bars, much to the displeasure of her lover, Trey Seaver. A former SWAT officer with the Atlanta police department, Trey believes in letting the authorities handle complex matters of crime and punishment.

But then the Talbot case flares back to life.

It was the crime that rocked Atlanta—actress Jessica Talbot shot dead in her Buckhead mansion and her husband, movie producer Nick Talbot, accused of the murder. It seemed an open and shut case…until a dirty cop’s secret forced prosecutors to set Talbot free. Now, four years later, someone wants him dead, and the evidence points to the man most convinced of Talbot’s guilt—Trey.

Talbot offers an irresistible deal—he’ll keep Trey’s name off the suspect list if Trey agrees to a one-on-one interview. It’s a chance for Trey to determine once and for all if Talbot really is a killer, but it could also expose secrets in Trey’s own past, confidential information he has sworn to protect. Caught between his drive for justice and his need for security, Trey does the unexpected—he asks Tai to help him investigate.

It’s a situation fraught with drama and potential disaster, the kind of case Tai relishes. With Trey by her side—and in a killer’s crosshairs—she vows to use every trick in her slightly sketchy playbook to stop a vigilante murderer from claiming a fresh victim.

“The sixth title . . . is the dramatic culmination of this series’ primary story arc with the two damaged protagonists, after struggling with family and personal demons, finding answers and moving on with their lives. While the mystery is filled with complex characters, it’s the uncertainty, pain, and awkwardness of the two leads that drives this intense story.”
— Lesa Holstine for Library Journal