THE TIP LINE

Perfect for fans of Hannah Morrissey and May Cobb, Vanessa Cuti's debut is an unsettling thriller that asks just how far you should go to find love.

Anxious to get married, thirty-year-old Virginia Carey lands a job as an operator at a police tip line, where she thinks finding a husband will be easy. There's Charlie Ford, a surprisingly sweet homicide detective, and charming police chief Declan Brady. But just as Virginia's plans begin to fall into place and she can almost picture a ring on her finger, she answers a call from Verona - a mysterious woman who provides a tip about four bodies on a remote local beach. Verona, a sex worker, also gives Virginia details on sordid and raucous parties attended by law enforcement officers, and on the strange fetishes of cops she has been involved with. Then comes an explosive tip: Verona thinks it's a police officer who is responsible for the killings. But it can't be true - the cops Virginia works with are marriage material, even if they are a little rough around the edges. The tip line will reveal the truth about those murders. So long as Virginia is willing - and lives long enough - to hear it... Vanessa Cuti's fiction has appeared in The Best American Short Stories 2021, The Kenyon Review, AGNI, West Branch, Indiana Review, Cimarron Review, The Cincinnati Review, Shenandoah, The Rumpus and others. She received her MFA from Stony Brook University and lives in the suburbs of New York.