The Flapper, the Scientist, and the Saboteur

The Flapper, the Scientist, and the Saboteur
277 Pages
ISBN 978194521505

A workaholic bio-medical scientist, Beth Armstrong, is torn between saving her sabotaged ground-breaking multiple sclerosis research or honoring an obligation to care for her chain-smoking, Cuba-Libre drinking, ex-flapper aunt. Beth is an obsessive professional dedicated to keeping her science institute a world-class organization. Unlike Beth, her aunt would prefer anything deadly to losing her independence under the care of her compulsive niece. While a murderous culprit runs loose in the science institute, frustrating Beth at every turn, her raucous aunt entertains Beth's neglected husband with nightly cocktails and stories from the Roaring Twenties.

The Flapper the Scientist, and the Saboteur combines a mystery intertwined with a a generational battle-of-wills story between a dedicated professional intent on fighting chaos with order, and a free-spirited aunt who insists her niece listen to her heart and learn to live in the moment.

"Readers will initially settle in for a standard mystery....But when the appealing Kathleen and Harold take over things, this story becomes much more complicated than a simple whodunit--it delightfully turns into serious literature." -Kirkus Reviewers starred review

Charlene Bell Dietz

About Charlene Bell Dietz (Corrales, New Mexico Author)

Charlene Bell Dietz

Charlene Dietz, after retiring as an Albuquerque Public School educator and instructor for the College of Santa Fe, traveled the United States as an educational consultant for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing. As a volunteer, she’s excavated dinosaurs, prepared fossils for exhibits, catalogued prehistoric life for the NM Museum of Natural History & Science, and served as a community lay person for over twenty-five years at the Sandia Federal Laboratories’ Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute.

She now enjoys the peacefulness of living in the central mountains of New Mexico surrounded by wildlife where she can connect with her writing and artistic muses. Her espionage-family saga novel, The Flapper, the Scientist, and the Saboteur won the 2016 NM-AZ First Book Award, was a Finalist for the 2017 International Book Awards, and received a Kirkus starred review. “Readers will initially settle in for a standard mystery…this story becomes much more complicated than a simple whodunit—it delightfully turns into serious literature.”

Her second book, The Flapper, the Impostor, and the Stalker, is a stand-alone Roaring-Twenties historical mystery, revealing the young adult life of the ex-flapper of the first book and was released in late fall 2017.