Crime Concept Contest, Social Media Style--WINNERS!

First let it be said that the entries to this contest were amazing--and so much fun to read! You've proven once again that social media can indeed be murder. We hope you all are writing these books like mad because we want to read them. And if you don't write, them we will:).

And now a drum roll please...

FIRST PLACE goes to Silver James:

The Bluebird Murders

Self-appointed arbiter of internet manners, Reggie Van Pelt tracks miscreants misusing Twitter. His wicked barbs in 140 characters can eviscerate even the most clueless. When the worst offenders mysteriously die, a series of emails to local police detective Jamie Grimm puts her on the trail. Is Van Pelt a vigilante or a hero? And who is the guy shadowing Jamie’s every move? Is he really from the FBI’s cyber crime unit or is Dan Owen an internet stalker homing in on Jamie and her investigation? A technophobe at heart, Jamie has to take a crash course in all things social media in order to track the killer before she becomes his next victim.

(Silver, please contact Hallie Ephron for your prize.)

SECOND PLACE goes to Linda Leszcluk:

Tara Cauldfield, wealthy and pampered, is used to getting what she wants. But what she wants this weekend is to go away with her very unapproved of boyfriend. Thinking to fool her wealthy parents, Tara gives her cell phone to Kristen Trace, a scholarship student at Morningshade School, along with $100. Kristen’s job – to send regular text messages to Tara’s parents telling them what fun Tara is having on her weekend with “the girls”. What neither girl knows is Tara has been targeted by kidnappers who have tapped the GPS code on her cell phone to track her movements. When FBI Special Agent John Trace is called in on the case, he has no way of knowing it’s not the Cauldfield’s daughter he’s searching for but his own.

(Linda, please contact Julia Spencer-Fleming for your prize.)

THIRD PLACE goes to CPatLarge:

So I’m a hacker – get over it. Not all of us are nerdy, unwashed males hanging out in questionable Internet chat rooms because we’re socially inept. Some of us are reasonably articulate, employed, and civic-minded. And we’re female. My friend Carmen and I work in the college computer lab to pay our way through school. We like to explore the system, see what we can learn, expose security weaknesses, not create havoc for havoc’s sake. Never expected to find our director using the network to tap into classified materials at the Air Force base east of town. Now the bastard killed Carmen and thinks he can frame me for the whole mess. Not happening. As my Gypsy grandma always says, karma’s a bitch. In this case, her name’s Fatal Woods.

(Pat, please contact Hank Ryan for your prize.)

FOURTH PRIZE goes to Sapphire Savvy:

A lady finds that her dead child's name is being used on facebook, and this person uncannily knows information that only the child did. When she finally decides to seek their banning or to find their IP address she finds it is coming from somewhere within her own house.

(Please contact Roberta Isleib for your prize.)


FIFTH PLACE goes to Edith Maxwell:

The Feoffees are a secretive cabal entrusted for more than 3 centuries with a prime piece of real estate. Feelings run high in the town because the Feoffees have not been transferring rents from the trust to the schools, as is their mission. In an attempt to gain support, they form a Facebook community page. A citizen opposed to their secrecy creates a false identity and begins posting facts about the unsavory lives of the three men. When one of the Feoffees turns up dead on the beach and linguist Lauren Rousseau is accused of the murder, she tracks down the killer by analyzing the language used in the accusatory posts.

Edith
http://edithmaxwell.blogspot.com/

(Edith, Please contact Jan Brogan for your prize.)

HONORABLE MENTIONS--we loved them all, you guys are amazing!

April 1, 2011 1:31 AM

Rebecca said...

When an online friend seemingly disappears, art historian Megan Toomey decides to track down her friend in person. She is shocked by the discovery that her online pal doesn't appear to exist, and all of her social media and even employment networking profiles have been forged for some unknown purpose. Meg doesn't know what to think: is her friend--whomever she or he may be--a potential victim of a crime, or perhaps a perpetrator of one? As Meg peels back the many layers of deception, she begins to worry that she herself is a target of a faceless person or group with a hidden agenda.

April 1, 2011 2:22 AM

Lynn said...

What if the only evidence of a murder was a photo and a cryptic message sent to your Facebook page? And what if no one, the police, your friends, even your boss believed the photo was real? No one but you. Feeling like the girl who cries wolf, Vanna Jones, who’s more used to covering the society page and local festivals for her small hometown paper, must track down the clues and find the killer before she winds up the subject in the next photograph.

April 1, 2011 9:42 AM

cujorilla said...

LOL - Last One Living: A young girl, Kiera, in her early teens finds out she is adopted and joins an adoption peer group on Facebook. She is contacted by someone claiming to be her father and sets up a meeting. In the meantime, she researches on her own and finds she may have three siblings who are also in the Facebook group. Each one has been contacted by "Father" but none know that any of the others have been contacted. As their sibling relationships become known to each other, they start vanishing. Is it "Father" or someone else who is responsible? Keira's only clue is a series of private messages signed LOL, that her missing siblings have received before disappearing. What's so secret that the four must be kept apart and can Keira keep from vanishing herself? Will she be the Last One Living?

April 1, 2011 10:40 AM

Jack said...

Angelina "Mama Bones" Bonacelli takes over her New Jersey Shore mob family using Twitter, her church website, and a carefully drilled-down advertising campaign on Facebook.

April 1, 2011 12:08 PM

Jean said...

in her fifties now and accepting that her mind was not the vault she once imagined. she gets a friend invite from a guy on facebook. she draws a total blank but sees they've got lots of mutual friends from college days. no one she asks actually remembers him but all say nice things. and anyway it's not like she'll ever run into him as she doesn't attend reunions and he lives hundreds of miles away. trying to be more social even if only with virtual shadows from the past, she accepts. his posts are innocuous and he fades into the hundreds of updates that accumulate every couple days. his profile pictures are a bit odd; a segment of a landscape, corner of a table and one day a grainy detail of an elbow. her wardrobe was not extensive in college. and though today she couldn't always remember why she'd walked from the kitchen to the living room, she could remember what she wore back then. she recognizes that elbow because it was wearing her favorite orange checked shirt from 1981. so she sets out to find what this guy's getting at.

April 1, 2011 2:54 PM

Kelly S. said...

History professor Cordelia Watterson joins on on-line history chat group and immediately hits it off with one of the other posters, "Sally K" who is doing historic reconstruction work in one of Louisville's oldest houses. Cordelia is saddened to get an e-mail from the group's leader that Sally was killed in a tragic accident while working on the house. But then she is shocked to then get an e-mail from Sally, begging for her help. Cordelia alerts her detective friend Hunter. A trace of the e-mail reveals it was sent from Sally's phone- while sealed with Sally's personal effects at the morgue! Her autopsy reveals her accident was actually murder. What was the secret that Sally had found out that led to her death? And who sent that last e-mail from the morgue?

April 1, 2011 5:17 PM

Pat Marinelli said...

A woman and her husbnad have both been downsized from thier jobs in order to obtain an income, she sets up a Facebook account and offers her husband as a "Handyman" to single women who need work done around the house, i.e. carpentry, plumbing, car repairs, etc. All the little jobs you can't get big contractors to do. Within two months, she must hire extra "handymen" because they have such a huge workload. But have any of these women noticed anything missing around the house?

April 1, 2011 7:43 PM

Lorilye said...

Reggie is a computer hacker company’s hire to break into their computer systems, locate their vulnerabilities and close up the holes, by day. By night, he uses the information gained to find and stalk his next victim. Holley is a serial killer profiler with the FBI, but when she starts an online relationship with a mild mannered librarian, comments he makes in texts, emails, and Facebook chats makes her suspect he might be the very person she’s tracked for four years.. Torn between a relationship Holley believes might be ‘the one’ and a man she thinks maybe targeting her as his next victim, she walks a fine line between woman and profiler.

April 1, 2011 9:34 PM

Jordan said...

Kaytlin Garner lives and works as a photographer in Gloucester, VA, a thousand miles from her family and the town in which she grew up. She talks with her sister, Rachel, every day until Rachel quits answering her phone and messages over Facebook. When Rachel disconnects from the world, Kaytlin starts receiving text messages from an unknown number and pictures only she has copies of get posted to her blog. Once she gets a call from the Carthage police telling her that Rachel is missing, she decides to go home.

Kaytlin goes immediately to the police station once back in the small town and is met by the one person she thought she’d never see again: James Lawie. With a degree in Technology Information Systems, he’s the lead on the case. When two of Rachel‘s friends are found dead, through posts to Kate‘s blog, Kaytlin tells Lawie what has been happening to her. They realize that the only way to get down to the bottom of what’s going on is to find Rachel. The problem is that the stalker knows every move that the Lawie and Kaytlin make, he’s piggybacking off their technology; finding Rachel is going to lead the stalker right to her but it’s a chance they are going to have to take.