Design a cover for a murder mystery featuring international intrigue

Lost Colony: The Hennepin Island Murders

Steve Berg

Steve Berg’s primary work has been in journalism. He covered stories in forty-two states as a Washington, D.C.- and Minneapolis-based reporter and editorial writer for the Minneapolis Star Tribune before writing two architecture books on sports stadiums. His educational credits include the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Stanford University. “Lost Colony: The Hennepin Island Murders” is his first novel. Steve and his wife live in Asheville, N.C.

Nordic Noir Comes to America
Thirty years after the shocking and never-solved 1986 assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme on a snowy street in Stockholm, an activist priest is found gruesomely sacrificed on the altar of a Swedish-American church in Minneapolis. The church’s immigrant janitor is also slain, execution style. The crime shocks Hennepin Island, the church’s time-forgotten riverfront neighborhood, where Span Lokken, a demoralized newspaperman and his improbable partner, Maggie Lindberg, the murdered clergyman’s stylish young assistant, join forces to search for the killers.
The trail leads to the castle fortress of the island’s reclusive kingpin, Jonas Kron, whose delusions hide a gripping international mystery that brings the story full circle. Along the way, the curious bond between the unlikely detectives — Span and Maggie — only deepens as they seek to fill the empty spaces in their own lives.

Adult women and men around the world who enjoy mystery crime thrillers. Readers who like highly relatable characters who take action in the face of fear and vulnerability.

Lost Colony
The Hennepin Island Murders
A novel
by Steve Berg
Testimonial:

Steve Berg’s primary work has been in journalism. He covered stories in forty-two states as a Washington, D.C.- and Minneapolis-based reporter and editorial writer for the Minneapolis Star Tribune before writing two architecture books on sports stadiums. His educational credits include the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Stanford University. “Lost Colony: The Hennepin Island Murders” is his first novel. Steve and his wife live in Asheville, N.C.

Black
Sepia (or tone to suggest newsprint)
Red

A simple, striking and textured book cover. Font and colors to cue crime/mystery with potential Soviet intrigue. A main character is a newspaper reporter so designer might consider incorporating the texture of newsprint -- and perhaps the appearance of a "tear" ripping through part of the cover. (See rough cover concept and pitch deck attached).
The other main character is a blonde, 30-something female priest, identified by a clerical collar See samples attached for rough concepts. Also note that it the female priest would need a more dramatic expression on the book cover than the one shown in the attached "pitch deck."
(This is not a suggestion to include both characters on the cover. If designer wishes to include any, we would lean toward the female priest.)
Require design files we can edit in Adobe Photoshop, as well as a PDF , and jpg.

Too many images. Muddled, overly complex. Font that's hard to read.