Shooters!: The Natalie McMasters Mysteries Book 8
Award-winning author Thomas A. Burns Jr. spins another mind-blowing tale about twentysomething detective Natalie McMasters and her unlikely family that’s torn from today’s headlines This time Nattie 
is preggers (?!) and unsure of the father. The candidates? Her husband Danny, the love of her life, or her biological father, who cruelly had his way with her. Complicating the situation, her Uncle Amos’s 3M Detective Agency is hemorrhaging money, and even the estate that houses Nattie, the agency and the fam is at risk.
Her quakeworthy solution? An infamous social media influencer and unapologetic misogynist is bringing his totally unwoke nude beauty pageant to Capital City and wants to hire 3M to provide security for its million-dollar prize. Her hormones raging, Nattie gets it that a cool mil would make all her money troubles vanish. But she doesn’t know that a malevolent enemy from her past is back and gunning for her…
Meanwhile, her foster son Eduardo has his own problems. Humiliated at school, he falls under a deadly influence that sends him racing toward an unimaginable act of violence that will change his young life forever. The astonishing ending is like nothing you’ve ever seen in contemporary crime fiction and will totally leave you reeling.
You’ll truly get why Natalie McMasters is “a detective for the new millennium”.
Purchase Shooters!
Book Excerpt
I can’t believe that A.T. wants me in the pageant!
“You got to be blowin’ smoke, dude!”
“Not at all. You’re gorgeous and you’re sexy. I think you’ve got a good chance to take it all.”
“But I’m pregnant!”
“So? Plenty of guys think pregnant women are the sexiest of all.”
I’m actually thinking about it! A million dollars is a lot of bread, and Dog knows I need bread. But what will Danny say? And Uncle?
“I’ll have to talk it over with my fam.”
“Why? You can’t make decisions on your own?”
Ouch! Dude sure knows how to hurt a girl. “That’s not the way we do things in our fam. I’ll talk to them and get back to you.”
“Better hurry. We start the prelims tomorrow a.m.”
“I said I’ll get back to you, dude.”
A.T. shrugs and walks away. A thought occurs. A.T. is one of the judges. And he’s telling me I’ve got a good chance to win if I enter? What’s he gonna want in return? OTOH, a million dollars would more that solve all the money problems that M.B. brought up the other day. She couldn’t accuse me of not pulling my weight, then.
About the Author, Thomas A. Burns Jr.
Thomas A. Burns Jr. writes the Natalie McMasters Mysteries from the small town of Wendell, North Carolina, where he lives with his wife and son, four cats and a Cardigan Welsh Corgi. He was born and grew up in New Jersey, attended Xavier High School in Manhattan, earned B.S degrees in Zoology and Microbiology at Michigan State University and a M.S. in Microbiology at North Carolina State 
University. As a kid, Tom started reading boys’ mystery series such as the Hardy Boys, Ken Holt and Rick Brant, then graduated to the classics by authors such as A. Conan Doyle, Dorothy Sayers, John Dickson Carr, Erle Stanley Gardner and Rex Stout, to name a few. Tom has written fiction as a hobby all of his life, beginning with Man from U.N.C.L.E. stories in marble-backed copybooks in grade school. He built a career as technical, science and medical writer and editor for nearly thirty years in industry and government. Currently a full-time novelist, he’s excited to publish his own mystery series, as well as writing stories about his second most favorite detective, Sherlock Holmes. Tom’s Holmes story, The Camberwell Poisoner, appeared in the March–June issue of The Strand Magazine in 2021, and many of his other Holmes stories have been published by MX Books and Belanger Books. The sixth book in the Natalie McMasters Mysteries, Killers!, was released in September, 2021, and won the Silver Falchion award for best action/adventure book of 2021 at the Killer Nashville International Writers’ Conference. His latest Natalie McMasters Mystery, Sister!, was published on December 5, 2022, and was chosen as a finalist for the Silver Falchion award in 2023. Tom has also written a Lovecraftian horror novel, The Legacy of the Unborn, under the pen name of Silas K. Henderson‒a sequel to H.P. Lovecraft’s masterpiece At the Mountains of Madness. Tom also published his first volume of Sherlock Holmes stories, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson: Ten Steps from Baker Street, on March 1, 2023.
