Death Comes Too Soon, the second book in Bridget's forays into mystery, will be out 2005. In the story, Bridg goes to the Oregon coast to help an art league. She figures she'll do a little work, have a little fun in the sun. But when one of the league's board members has a fatal accident, Bridg's semi-vacation turns deadly serious.

Reviews:

Among the hundred books I receive for review every month are maybe three of four good ones, such as Patricia Harrington's series featuring Bridget O'Hern. It was not fair of Pat to send me DEATH COMES TOO SOON as I started a house and pet-sitting assignment. I stayed up too late reading and staggered lurry-eyed next morning to tend to five cats and a dog. Pat's colorful descriptions are perfect and her believable characters include Narvik, a Norwegian Elkhound. Heroine Bridget, widowed in DEATH STALKS THE KHMER, now has a romance blooming.-- Linda Hutton, BOOKS PLUS, a publication of Women in the Arts

Death Comes Too Soon is an atmospheric mystery set in a lovely part of the world, with a host of very real people with equally real problems... each with their own reasons for wanting Bev out of the picture. & Narvik, the enchanting four-legged friend who takes Bridget on all sorts of adventures. & along the way, this empty-nester finds something to excite her.
Read more here: www.rebeccasreads.com

Death Comes Too Soon, ISBN # 1-4137-7708-2
AmErica House Bridget O'Hern, a nonprofit consultant, goes to the Oregon coast to work a little and play a lot. Bridget is "seeking her bliss" since recovering from the tragic end of her twenty-three-year marriage, but in this case the road to bliss is littered...with a body. Once again, as in Death Stalks the Khmer, Bridget finds herself helping the investigating police.

"Six of today's bright new stars of Mystery writing offer up their best. With 15,000 words each, you get the flash fiction of Nick Andreychuk, short stories by Amy Grech, Patricia Harrington, Edward C. Lynskey and G. W. Thomas, plus the novella "The Axe Falls Thus" by Stephen D. Rogers."
Order Murder by Six in paperback

Flashshot
anthology featuring a story by Pat Harrington

G. W. Thomas, editor, has compiled 369 micro-stories (around 100 wrds. each) with a horror tint, though many are humorous, science fiction, mystery or suspense. The book includes the entire first year of FLASHSHOT from the daily flash fiction newsletter. Pat has several micro-stories in this collection. See Flashshot Year 1

Fat Cat and the Mystery Next Door
a beginning e-reader

Buy Now- Childrenz Books

WHEN I WAS A CHILD
book of poetry

Pat's poem "She Held My Hand" featured in this compilation

PoetWorks

Mystery in Mind

Pat has a story featured in this anthology of supernatural tales

Death Stalks the Khmer, ISBN # 1-58851-350-5
Trade paperback from AmErica House Publisher
BUY NOW!

How did Death Stalks the Khmer come about? I've worked with the Cambodian refugee community in the Puget Sound area for 11 years.  The families I've worked with have haunting stories of their experiences during the Khmer Rouge years from 1975-1979.  During that period, an estimated 2 million Cambodians died cruelly under the Pol Pot Khmer Rouge regime. The Cambodian (Khmer) culture is rich in tradition, ages old and fascinating.  I wanted to share something of that unique culture and felt that it could be done as a true whodunit built around the story of refugees struggling to acculturate into American society.  In the novel, a Cambodian refugee couple, the Hahn Lys, are shot and killed in their Seabell apartment.  Bridget O'Hern is called in to be a liaison between the Seabell police and the Khmer community.  Bridg hears the community whispering that the couple died because they had bad karma.  Bridg believes the Hahn Lys' deaths are rooted in the horrors of the Khmer Rouge times.  The first chapter of DEATH STALKS THE KHMER is here for your enjoyment.

Read Prologue to Death Comes Too Soon

Read Chapter 1 of Death Stalks the Khmer

About My Sleuth 

Read Reviews

Monthly Tips/Tidbits

Tell us about your sleuth - Bridget (Bridg) O'Hern is named after my great-grandmother who came from Tipperary, Ireland.  She had a reputation of being a grand storyteller, so I hope a genetic thread ties me to her venerable tradition.  My amateur sleuth Bridg is 48, and in her debut mystery, she "comes of age."  Granted, it's belatedly.  She's no teenager.  But in her debut in DEATH STALKS THE KHMER, she is recovering from a deep depression caused by long-term emotional abuse.  She's overcoming her past, looking to the future.  As her sidekick C. J. Johanson tells her, "Now you're seeking your bliss."  Bridg consults with nonprofit organizations, which helps her to get into different locales and to be with different people where, of course, murder and mayhem happen.  Oh, yes, did I tell you that Bridg lives in a place actually called St. Mary's Corner in western Washington?  It has some famous history that I'll tell you about at another time.

Reviews for DEATH STALKS THE KHMER

Reviewer:  Harriet Klausner , Book Browser
     In Seabell, Washington, lives a large, segregated by their own choices, Cambodian population. Most of the refuges fled their homeland to escape the brutality of the Khmer Rouge reign of Pol Pot. The populace adheres to the culture that Pol Pot tried to systematically exterminate while acclimating to the American way of life. However, many still struggle with flashbacks from the trauma and refuse to believe that the local police want to help them acclimate not abuse them.
     When someone kills Hahn Lys and his wife, the Southeast Asian Assistance Agency assigns Bridget OHern to serve as a liaison between the Cambodian community and the investigating officials. Because Hahn was Khmer Rouge, he had many enemies and his work for SEAAA did not ease hard feelings towards him. At the same time Hahn had business dealings with powerful Royalists. This contradiction makes Bridget wonder which side wanted Hahn dead and why?
     The Cambodian immigration is fascinating to watch as the group struggles with preserving a rich heritage while adopting to their new homeland. Like many immigrants before them, the second generation wants to be All-American, feeling less tied to the old ways. Patricia Harrington writes a intelligent social commentary wrapped inside a clever ethnic mystery with solid charcaters to support the entire detailed story line. DEATH STALKS THE KHMER is an awesome amateur sleuth story that succeeds in entertaining and educating the reader.

Reviewer: Babs Lakey Publisher/Author --What a book! I stared out my window, immobilized with thoughts of the 'police action' that went on for decades, of friends who never made it home, and of an entire culture that is foreign to me and many others. You would think that being brought up Catholic I'd be familiar with the effects of tradition and ceremonial customs on our lives, but I've not begun to understand the beauty nor importance of ritual. And I am guilty of hearing the words that Ms. Harrington tells us inspired her to write this series, "They're so different from us. Why don't we send 'em all back to where they came from?", and doing nothing, saying nothing, and that's not okay, and feels far worse to me today than it did before I read "Death Stalks the Khmer".   And so this is an entertaining book that makes you stop and think about the people who came out of the "killing fields" and into the asphalt jungles.  Mission accomplished for Patricia Harrington.
     I like protagonist Bridget O' Hern. I want to know her better. And I was so interested in her that despite a life of deadlines, I kept reading, could not stop! Second mission accomplished.
     This is a traditional mystery surrounded with an aura of intrigue that is unique and anything *but* traditional. I see Death Stalks the Khmer as more than entertainment, it may become a vehicle that carries us forward...a step
in the journey of understanding between people.
     A Seattle Cambodian couple are murdered in their apartment and Bridget is assigned the task of liaison between the community and the investigating officers. She becomes the bridge for a people who through no fault of their own, are already disenfranchised from the majority of mainstream society.  Many of these refugees have known nothing but corruption and fear their entire lives--a corruption that did not exclude their own government or ours. How could they possibly avoid the desire to take control and become
the offenders?
     Ms. Harrington's background these past eleven years of working with the Cambodian (and Vietnamese/Laotian) community could easily have led her to believe she knew them well enough to speak in their voice. She chose not to.  That works very well for me as I would guess it might for them. I felt their struggle and am left with a greater understanding of what might influence and motivate them. We fear what we do not understand.
     I'm very excited about this book and cannot wait to read more. In many ways the author is equally interesting. Her work with the grant program is critical. The purpose behind that program is to eliminate drugs, gangs and associated crime and violence. Issues that concern all of us. I believe this
is a book that you will treasure because of the information it gives, information we should have had long ago. Buy it, read it, you won't put it down. Ah! Mission Accomplished!

Reviewer: --Sandra Morgan, www.fictionforest.com
     Clashing cultures come together in Pat Harrington's Death Stalks the Khmer (ISBN: 1-58851-350-5; AmErica House; 2001) to create a compelling read both intriguing and entertaining.
     Assigned to the role of liaison between the Seabell Police Department and the Southeast Asian Assistance Agency character Bridget O'Hern serves as a "cultural tour guide" to police detective Jack Patrewski as the two work with groups of people distrustful of government agencies. Viewed as a helpful outsider by some and an unwelcome intruder by others, O'Hern is forced to choose between personal safety and her desire to see justice done as she and detective Patrewski discover a motive for murder steeped in the history of Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge.
     Harrington's novel is more than a simple work of fiction-- it's a sweeping landscape portrait of the process of assimilation framed by murder. Middle-aged Americans will remember heart wrenching scenes from The Killing Fields and the story of Loung Ung, First They Killed My Father, while reading this unusually sensitive and insightful work of fiction.
     Death Stalks the Khmer is a reminder that in the case of the Khmer Rouge Lady Justice has remained blind far too long.

Reviewer: Cathy Gallagher, Mystery Guide at mysterybooks@About.com - The Human Internet, E-mail: mysterybooks.guide@about.com

Through back story woven in with the current situation, Patricia Harrington has done an excellent job with her first novel in bringing to light the mindset of the refugees.  Her insight adds an extra layer of understanding in her descriptions of their stories of struggle and survival. . . Harrington also touches on the second generation stories, with the struggles of the refugees children trying to fit into a world between the cultures of their family and that of their friends. . . . The pressures of gangs versus family also add to the strength of the storyline.