Death of a Zen Master
By Cornelia Feye
Cornelia Feye is an author, a publisher, and an art historian with a MA from the University of Tübingen. After a career in museum education at the Mingei, the San Diego Museum of Art, and the Athenaeum in La Jolla, and teaching at several colleges, she founded Konstellation Press in 2017, an indie publishing company for genre fiction, giving a voice to independent writers and create a supportive community for local authors.
Feye’s first Vega & Greg Stern mystery novel, Spring of Tears, an art mystery set in France, won the San Diego Book Award. House of the Fox, set in the Anza Borrego desert, and Private Universe, a coming-of-age mystery and travelogue followed. During the pandemic in 2020, she finished her fourth novel Death of a Zen Master, a mystery set in a remote Zen Monastery. Her new near-future, post-apocalyptic mystery and survival story, Refuge on the Mountain, is set at a remote mountain cabin. Feye is represented by Blackbird Literary Agency. Cornelia lives in Ocean Beach, San Diego, where she finds inspiration in her garden and always looks for the green flash. www.konstellationpress.com
Private security specialist, Greg Stern, is a reluctant guest at a remote and inaccessible Zen monastery. His wife, Vega, sent him there after a marital transgression to ponder and improve his interaction with women.
When a dead boy is found in the meditation hall, the group of eclectic guests and monastics find themselves trapped in an enchanted valley with a murderer in their midst and no way out.
From a murder to a hidden Buddha and the involvement of a ring of perps who all have motivation to kill, Greg faces multiple challenges, from regaining his wife's trust and considering the lasting impact of cause and effect to facing death himself, revising his perception of his impact upon and movements in the world. Zen ideas and experiences run side by side with Greg's murder investigation and intrigue, creating a satisfyingly revealing story that operates on more than one level. It will especially intrigue readers with any degree of prior interest in Zen Buddhist perception, who will find the premise of a murder and a peaceful monastery's disruption to be thoroughly engrossing reading. Death of a Zen Master is highly recommended reading for murder mystery fans looking for more spiritual and psychological evolution in their main protagonist than is usually proffered in the typical 'whodunnit'. - D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review
Additional Information:
Published 2020 (Konstellation Press)– ISBN: 9781734642131– Paperback - 220 pages
Rights: World