Marnee Patricia Banks

Lori Duffy Foster

Lori Duffy Foster is a former crime reporter who writes from the hills of Northern Pennsylvania. A DEAD MAN’S EYES, the first in her Lisa Jamison Mysteries Series, is a Shamus Award finalist and was an Agatha Award nominee. NEVER BROKEN, book 2 in the series, released in April. Her debut thriller, NEVER LET GO, releases in December from Level Best Books. Lori is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, The Historical Novel Society, International Thriller Writers, Private Eye Writers of America and Pennwriters.

Uncaged welcomes Lori Duffy Foster

Welcome to Uncaged! Your latest release is the second book in The Lisa Jamison Mystery series, Never Broken. Can you tell readers more about this series and the books?

Thanks for having me here and for giving me this opportunity!

The protagonist of my series, Lisa Jamison, is a newspaper reporter in Central New York who got pregnant at fifteen and landed in foster care after a witnessing a tragic incident. With the help of her foster parents, she kept the baby and put herself though college, but she lost contact with the baby’s father before her child was born. Lisa’s biological parents chose drugs over their daughter, never even trying to find her after she ran away.

A Dead Man’s Eyes, book one in the series, takes place sixteen years later. Lisa’s next assignment is the murder of her ex-boyfriend, father to her daughter Bridget. The cops call it a drug killing, but Lisa doesn’t believe it. She ignores warnings from her medical-examiner friend. She fails to heed barely veiled threats from the sheriff of a neighboring county. Instead, she risks her life and the lives of her daughter and their closest friend on a dangerous quest for answers.

Never Broken, book two, takes place two years later when Lisa finds a near-corpse of a stranger hiding in the backseat of her car. The man has no idea where he’d been, how long he’d been there or who had kept him captive. But one thing intrigues Lisa even more than his story: recent memories of a local woman who disappeared seven years earlier without a trace. The man takes Lisa deep into a world of sweatshops, modern-day slavery and white supremacy. She must keep the stranger hidden while she gathers enough evidence to turn the case over to city police or the FBI. At least three lives—her own, the stranger’s and missing woman’s—depend on it.

What is the most difficult scene for you to write? What is the easiest?

From a craft perspective, the middle of the book is always hardest for me. I have to keep up the pace and keep readers intrigued while also holding back on the resolution. I am a fast writer, eager to get to the end. So, restraint can be a bit painful for me. The