Iris is watching Bronze. Bronze is following Carolyn. Carolyn is sleeping with Billy. Now Billy is dead and a killer is coming for them all. Washington, DC, 1997: A city stumbling toward recovery after a decade of violence, drugs, AIDS, and exodus. Bronze Goldberg—a soft-boiled private detective in a hard-boiled world—scrapes out a living stalking the steps of cheating spouses while bearing the trauma of the past like an open wound. But his latest assignment, surveilling the indiscretions of a stunning femme fatale, has entangled him in the murder of an up-and-coming congressman and made him the target of an unstoppable assassin. Meanwhile, the spiraling chaos of Bronze’s dangerous adventures has attracted the obsessive attention of his landlord, Iris Margaryan, a brilliant romance novelist who may hold the missing piece in the puzzle of Bronze’s fatal past. Can Bronze survive long enough to reach the ultimate truth? A gripping noir mystery—both intensely provocative and darkly thrilling— Blood and Mascara descends into the depths of the human soul before exploding in an ending too shocking to ever forget. An Independent Book Review Best Book of 2024 "Krainin elevates contemporary noir with this gritty, hard-hitting thriller that will have readers anxiously awaiting a sequel. Highly recommended." -BestThrillers "Through pitch-perfect PI dialogue and a plot packed with political duplicity, sleaze, and casual violence, Krainin presents a fiendish murder mystery that shines a light on both the best and worst of humanity... a thrilling whodunit." -Independent Book Review (starred review) "In Colin Krainin's haunting thriller Blood and Mascara , an endearing but broken detective is driven to stop a ruthless assassin." - Foreword Clarion Reviews "Krainin crafts the perfectly flawed hero in Bronze... [and] pushes this debut thriller to the max." -BookLife "One of the book's standout features is its gorgeous prose, which provides a striking contrast to the fast-paced crime narrative." -Underrated Reads " Blood and Mascara is a tense and gripping crime thriller... well paced and engrossing, the contrast between Bronze's crime-riddled world and Margaryan's realm of romantic fiction proves to be a winning combination... the acute attention to detail infuses the explosive storyline with an inspiring and magnetic intensity." -The BookLife Prize