Murder at the Hotel Orient

'Sultry, sinister and smart. Sterling Lockwood is going to steal your heart - just don't trust her with it' Stuart Turton, author of The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle In Vienna, city of spies, American Sterling Lockwood is the loyal concierge at the infamous Hotel Orient. After the double murder of her ex-girlfriend and a tech mogul building an Austrian surveillance state, Sterling has to turn detective. But finding the truth will require breaking the Orient's sacred code of secrecy, while keeping a few secrets of her own. The police struggle when modern investigative technology proves useless at the old-fashioned hotel. Because clients use aliases, pay cash, and stay mere hours, all suspects have vanished. Sterling agrees to assist alongside her best friend and colleague Fernando, if only to avoid arrest and the suspicion regarding her own movements that night. As enemies close in, she risks everything to solve a case haunted by the past in a city with a fetish for nostalgia.

Alessandra Ranelli is an American author living in Vienna, Austria. Her work focuses on life's great passions: love, lust, and loss. As such, she's been known to kiss and tell. Alessandra's crime writing is influenced by her love of old Hollywood glamour and Golden Age mysteries. It's a cocktail made from a generous pour of bourbon, an ounce of film noir, and a dash of bawdy humour - served in a rocks glass with red lipstick staining the rim. Murder at the Hotel Orient is her debut novel.