Local Author Visit: Ken Linn

In the debut novel in the Pete Barrow Mystery Series, math teacher and part-time private investigator Pete Barrow takes on the case of a missing, abused wife, last reported to be hiding out in Virginia’s rural Northern Neck Peninsula with a mysterious woman known as ‘The Bus Lady’. 

With the support of his girlfriend, school psychologist Wendi Wynston, and the sometimes reluctant help of the county’s longtime African- American sheriff, Oscar Murphy, Barrow takes on the case that leads from a sketchy women’s crisis center to a selective program at a secretive estate.

When two people turn up dead, the investigation veers off into dangerous territory populated with an ambitious group of lawyers, a six-year-old boy of questionable origin, a threatening thug for hire, and a wealthy man with a dark and twisted secret.

Ken Linn spent four decades teaching high school mathematics in both private and public schools throughout the Chesapeake Bay region of Virginia and Maryland. A native of Lock Haven, PA, he began writing during his days at Lock Haven State College.

His professional debut short story, “Stray,” appeared in the January/February 2021 issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and was included in the list of “Other Distinguished Mystery and Suspense of 2021” in the volume The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2022.

Preceding the novel, Dwellings, his three short stories featuring private investigator Pete Barrow and Sheriff Oscar Murphy have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.

A fourth Barrow story is forthcoming in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine in summer 2026.

The next novel in the series is scheduled for release in early 2027.

He is an active member of Mystery Writers of America.

Visit: kenlinnauthor.com