Complete at 80,000 words, The Dress Hunt won third place in the 2024 Daphne DuMaurier Kiss of Death competition for unpublished suspense.
Like Stacy Willingham’s A Flicker in the Dark, the book depicts a protagonist torn about whether she is paranoid or in danger. With international intrigue, it is set in San Francisco, London, and Antwerp.
Synopsis:
Either Violet’s paranoia is back, or someone is hunting her.
For the last fourteen years, academic underdog Violet has kept her schizophrenia secret. Now twenty-eight and a PhD candidate, Violet shocks her San Francisco university by winning a prestigious neuroscience award. She buys a stunning dress at a local thrift shop for the event, unaware that the dress wound up there by accident, or that the crystals splashed across the bodice are actually rare blue diamonds.
Violet frets that solo travel to the London reception will test her illness, so her teenage sister comes along. A budding influencer, the young girl posts a photo of Violet wearing the dress online. It quickly goes viral. By the time they reach London, Violet is being stalked by two men: one handsome and determined to charm the dress off her; the other psychopathic and willing to kill for it. After missing a medication dose, Violet suspects her paranoia is returning. When her sister winds up dead, Violet finds herself straddling the line between psychosis and the reality that her sister’s killer is still out there–and looking for the diamonds.