M.M. Desch spent more than thirty years as a psychiatrist, untangling complicated motivations and listening to the stories people tell to protect themselves. Now a full-time crime fiction author, she channels that clinical experience into The Portland Murders, a connected series of psychological suspense where the psychology is real, the stakes are high, and no one's inner life is quite as tidy as they'd like you to believe. The series began with Tangled Darkness (Rowan Prose Publishing, 2025), a Chanticleer Clue Awards shortlist honoree and 2025 Readers' Favorite Finalist, and continues with the novellas If I Go Quiet and Lethal Loyalty.
Play Me Once explores the particular danger of being loved by someone who studied you first. Grace MacKenzie learned to go quiet as a girl, and that quiet has always kept her safe. At fifty, she finally opens the door she spent decades locking. The question at the heart of the book: what happens when the thing that always protected you is the thing that lets the predator in?
M.M. holds an MD from the University of Nebraska Medical Center and completed her psychiatric residency at the University of Minnesota, where she served as Chief Resident. She is an active member of Sisters in Crime and Willamette Writers, and lives in Portland, Oregon, with her wife and a miniature schnauzer who has never once been accused of murder. (Yet.)