Today is my turn to share my Feature Post and Book Review for CHAOS ON THEISLAND (DI Liam O’Reilly Mysteries Book #9) by Stewart Giles on this Books ‘n’ All Promotions Blog Tour.
Below you will find a book blurb, my book review, and the author’s bio and social media links. Enjoy!
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Book Blurb
If there’s one thing Detective Liam O’Reilly hates, it’s bombs.
The Irishman transferred to the peaceful island of Guernsey to escape that kind of thing.
So, when random explosions start taking the people on the island by surprise, O’Reilly wonders if moving to Guernsey was such a good idea.
It soon becomes clear that the bombs are a smokescreen for something else. Something more sinister is going on, and when a gang of masked men enter the equation, O’Reilly realises this has nothing to do with blowing things up.
A team of armed men, dubbed the Fab Four Robbers by the press, soon capture the hearts of the people of Guernsey, and chaos hits the island.
O’Reilly is facing the worst dilemma of his career.
Many residents of the island are championing these thugs.
This new breed of criminals disguised as John, Paul, George and Ringo are about to educate O’Reilly in the fine art of chaos.
CHAOS ON THE ISLAND (DI Liam O’Reilly Mysteries Book #9) by Stewart Giles is another engaging mystery/police procedural featuring DI Liam O’Reilly and his team on the island of Guernsey. This is the ninth book in the series and while the characters’ relationships continue to grow, each crime plot is unique and is solved by the end of the book so they can be read as standalones.
April Fool’s Day is not a good day for police, and it is an especially bad day for DI Liam O’Reilly as a bomb explodes on Guernsey island. Liam hates bombs. As everyone is busy at the site of the blast, four men in Beatles masks rob a high-end jewelry store. The island paper nicknames them “The Fab Four” as they continue to cause chaos on the island. At first there are no casualties, but that soon changes with Liam and his team no closer to uncovering who they are and understanding what their motive might be.
Liam knows there must be a motive for the Fab Four’s crimes, but it will take his and his team’s usual dogged determination and out of the box investigative skills to stop the chaos on the island.
Once again, Mr. Giles has led me on an exciting chase with DI Liam O’Reilly. I love this protagonist and series. Not only is the crime mystery captivating, but there are also many changes going on in Liam’s personal life in this book. I always look forward to catching up with Liam, his daughter, and the members of his detective squad. The Fab Four disguises were an entertaining way to bring song references and debates about who you liked best of the four into the story even though these four were killers. I was guessing and surprised right up to the end in this fast crime read that I could not put down.
I highly recommend this crime mystery addition to the DI Liam O’Reilly series!
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Author Bio
After reading English at 3 Universities and graduating from none of them, I set off travelling around the world with my wife, Ann, finally settling in South Africa, where we still live.
In 2014 Ann dropped a rather large speaker on my head and I came up with the idea for a detective series. DS Jason Smith was born. Smith, the first in the series was finished a few months later.
3 years and 8 DS Smith books later, Joffe Books wondered if I would be interested in working with them. As a self-published author, I agreed. However, we decided on a new series – the DC Harriet Taylor: Cornwall series.
The Beekeeper was published and soon hit the number one spot in Australia. The second in the series, The Perfect Murder did just as well.
I continued to self-publish the Smith series and Unworthy hit the shelves in 2018 with amazing results. I therefore made the decision to self-publish The Backpacker which is book 3 in the Detective Harriet Taylor series which was published in July 2018.
After The Backpacker I had an idea for a totally new start to a series – a collaboration between the Smith and Harriet thrillers and The Enigma was born. It brought together the broody, enigmatic Jason Smith and the more level-headed Harriet Taylor.
The Miranda trilogy is something totally different. A psychological thriller trilogy. It is a real departure from anything else I’ve written before.
The Detective Jason Smith series continues to grow. I also have another series featuring an Irish detective who relocated to Guernsey. The first 8 books in the Detective Liam O’Reilly series are now available. There are also 3 stand alone novels.
SLOW HORSES (Slough House Book #1) by Mick Herron is a great riveting British espionage thriller and start to the Slough House series. This group of characters are unique, and the story has so many twists I was unable to put it down. Even though this is the first book in a series, it is does have a solid ending and can be read as a standalone.
Slough House is the place that washed up spies go when they can no longer be trusted and used in regular service. It is a place for the “slow horses” to either finish out their MI5 career doing endless office drudgery or quit the service entirely. All hope to one day be called back up to the big game, but none are. The Slough House is headed by the infamous Jackson Lamb.
River Cartwright has waited his entire life to be a part of MI5 like his grandfather, but after a tremendous failure on his last training assignment, he is sent to Slough House. River is determined to not only redeem himself, but prove the mistake during his assignment was not his fault. When a young man is kidnapped and then threatened to be beheaded live on the internet, River believes this is his chance to get out of Slough House, but this kidnapping is not entirely what it seems. Jackson Lamb must count on all his “slow horses”, including River, to pull together to outwit more than kidnappers.
I loved this book and cannot believe I had not already read it. I picked it up because I had heard of the Apple+ series and I prefer to read the book before watching the movie or TV series and I am very glad I did. I always enjoy finding a great story with memorable characters and that it is the first book in a series only makes it better. Jackson Lamb and all the slow horses have very interesting reasons for being sent to Slough House and even though everyone has written them off, they rise to the occasion and prove they are still able to play the game.
This plot has many unexpected twists and surprises that make this espionage thriller a great read and I cannot wait to start book #2 in the series. I highly recommend this book!
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About the Author
Mick Herron’s six Slough House novels have been shortlisted for eight CWA Daggers, winning twice, and shortlisted for the Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year three times. The first, Slow Horses, was picked as one of the best twenty spy novels of all time by the Daily Telegraph, while the most recent, Joe Country, was a Sunday Times top ten bestseller.
Mick Herron was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, and now lives in Oxford.
On the dark streets of Mumbai, the paths of a missing dancer, a serial killer, and an inspector with a haunted past converge in an evocative thriller about lost love and murderous obsession.
After years of dancing in Mumbai’s bars, Tara Mondal was desperate for a new start. So when a client offered her a life-changing payout to indulge a harmless, if odd, fantasy, she accepted. The setup was simple: wear a blue-sequined saree, enter a crowded railway station, and escape from view in less than three minutes. It was the last time anyone saw Tara.
Thirteen years later, Tara’s lover, Inspector Arnav Singh Rajput, is still grappling with her disappearance as he faces a horrifying new crisis: on the city’s outskirts, women’s dismembered bodies are being unearthed from shallow graves. Very little links the murders, except a scattering of blue sequins and a decade’s worth of missing persons reports that correspond with major festivals.
Past and present blur as Arnav realizes he’s on the trail of a serial killer and that someone wants his investigation buried at any cost. Could the key to finding Tara and solving these murders be hidden in one of his cold cases? Or will the next body they recover be hers?
THE BLUE BAR (Blue Mumbai Thriller Book #1) by Damyanti Biswas is a gritty crime thriller/police procedural which is hopefully the first in a new series set in Mumbai, India, and features Inspector Arnav Rajput.
This thriller pulled me in with a perfectly paced police procedural on the hunt for a serial killer who has been able to kill for two decades without capture. Money, power, fame, government corruption, and police graft have misdirected or eliminated attempts to solve the killings of dance girls in the Mafia controlled Mumbai bar scene. The girls are all found without the same body parts, but the killings are not described in real time.
The story is told in alternating chapters by Inspector Arnav Rajput of the Mumbai Police department and Tara Mondal who was a young bar girl who got away but is back for the offer of a life-changing payment for one week’s work at the re-opening of The Blue Bar. They slept together when they were young and then Tara disappeared without a word. Arnav has never forgotten her and fears every time he discovers a young female’s body that it will be Tara. He shows up for The Blue Bar’s re-opening and is shocked to find Tara there once again. While Arnav has changed and wants Tara back, she is hiding a secret from him. Tara was the one who got away, not just from Arnav, and now that she is back, she once again becomes a target of the serial killer.
I was completely engrossed in this thriller. The characters are fully drawn and believable and even more interesting with the cultural differences. The crime thriller plot was paced perfectly as it continued to gain momentum as it got closer to the climax. I had to change my guess of who I believed was the serial killer several times. The descriptions of the scenery in and around Mumbai were vivid and made me feel like I was there. This was the first book I have read by this author, and it definitely will not be the last.
I highly recommend this crime thriller/police procedural with memorable characters and unique setting.
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About the Author
Damyanti Biswas lives in Singapore, and works with Delhi’s underprivileged children as part of Project Why, a charity that promotes education and social enhancement in underprivileged communities. Her short stories have been published in magazines in the US, UK, and Asia, and she helps edit the Forge Literary Magazine. Her debut crime novel You Beneath Your Skin has been optioned for screen by Endemol Shine, and her next, The Blue Bar, will be published on Jan 1, 2023 by Thomas & Mercer.
Today I mad sharing my Feature Post and Book Review for LANDSLIDE (A Mason Hackett Espionage Thriller Book #1) by Adam Sikes for this Partners In Crime Virtual Book Tour.
Below you will find a book synopsis, my book review, the author’s bio and social media links and a Kingsumo giveaway. This is an exciting debut. Good luck on the giveaway and enjoy!
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Book Synopsis
International Arms—Private Military Companies—Corruption at Every Turn
U.S. Marine veteran Mason Hackett moved to London to start his life over, and he’s done his best to convince himself that what happened fifteen years ago doesn’t matter—the people he killed, the men he lost, the lives he ruined. But when Mason sees the face of a dead friend flash on a television screen and then receives a mysterious email referencing a CIA operation gone bad, he can no longer ignore his inner demons.
Driven by loyalty and a need to uncover the truth, Mason launches on a perilous journey from the Czech Republic to Romania toward the war-torn separatist region in eastern Ukraine to honor a fifteen-year-old promise. The answers he seeks—the fate of a friend and his connection to the underworld of international arms dealers and defense corporations—throw Mason into the cauldron of a covert war where no one can be trusted.
Genre: Spy Thriller Published by: Oceanview Publishing Publication Date: September 2022 Number of Pages: 368 ISBN: 9781608095049 (ISBN10: 1608095045) Series: A Mason Hackett Espionage Thriller, #1
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My Book Review
RATING: 4 out of 5 Stars
LANDSLIDE (A Mason Hackett Espionage Thriller Book #1) by Adam Sikes is the first book in an exciting new espionage thriller series featuring a US Marine veteran living in London. This is the author’s debut novel, and I am looking forward to many more stories featuring this protagonist.
Mason Hackett is a US Marine veteran who left the states fifteen years ago to get his master’s degree in England and is working as an international banker in London. Mason sees the face of his dead best friend from his unit in Iraq on the television. He believes it just may be a doppelganger because this kidnapped man is a reporter, but then Mason gets a cryptic email that can only be from his friend asking for his help.
Mason discovers his friend has been involved in a CIA operation and has been captures by separatist in Ukraine. Mason is thrown into a morass of covert operations, arms dealers, international corporations, and war with no back-up, and no one can be trusted.
I really enjoyed this fast-paced espionage thriller. I liked the main character, Mason Hackett and his sense of loyalty and determination. The plot of this thriller kept me turning the pages, but as in most thrillers of this type some suspension of belief must be applied and this story had almost everyone being killed along the journey except for our hero. The characters are believable, but hopefully as the series continues, they will become more fully fleshed.
Overall, this is a new thriller and author worth taking the time to read.
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Author Bio:
Adam Sikes is a novelist and freelance writer. He is a graduate of Georgetown University with a degree in International Politics and a Masters in History. Prior to taking up the pen, he served in the US Marine Corps with combat tours in the Balkans, Iraq, and elsewhere in the Middle East. Following the Marines, Adam joined the CIA and conducted operations in Central Asia, East Africa, and Europe. He is the author of the international thriller Landslide and is the co-author of Open Skies: My Life as Afghanistan’s First Female Pilot. He lives in Southern California.
In Phillip Margolin’s Murder at Black Oaks, Attorney Robin Lockwood finds herself at an isolated retreat in the Oregon mountains, one with a tragic past and a legendary curse, and surrounded by many suspects and confronted with an impossible crime.
Defense Attorney Robin Lockwood is summoned by retired District Attorney Francis Hardy to meet with him at Black Oaks, the manor he owns up in the Oregon mountains. The manor has an interesting history – originally built in 1628 in England, there’s a murderous legend and curse attached to the mansion. Hardy, however, wants Lockwood’s help in a legal matter – righting a wrongful conviction from his days as a DA. A young man, Jose Alvarez, was convicted of murdering his girlfriend only for Hardy, years later when in private practice, to have a client of his admit to the murder and to framing the man Hardy convicted. Unable to reveal what he knew due to attorney client confidence, Hardy now wants Lockwood’s help in getting that conviction overturned.
Successful in their efforts, Hardy invites Lockwood up to Black Oaks for a celebration. Lockwood finds herself among an odd group of invitees – including the bitter, newly released, Alvarez. When Hardy is found murdered, with a knife connected to the original curse, Lockwood finds herself faced with a conundrum – who is the murder among them and how to stop them before there’s another victim.
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Elise’s Thoughts
Murder at Black Oaks by Phillip Margolin is a legal thriller that has the main character, Robin Lockwood, having to deal with a legendary curse, ancient grudges, escaped convicts, improbable masquerades, and a possible serial killer. Besides the haunted house there is also the former prosecutor, Frank Melville, who is also haunted by someone he prosecuted who turned out to be innocent.
Melville asks Robin Lockwood, a brilliant defense attorney, to right this long outstanding wrong and free an innocent man on death row, Jose Alvarez. Successful in their efforts, Melville invites Lockwood, her investigator, and Jose, up to Black Oaks for a celebration. Unfortunately, the celebration turns deadly after Melville is found murdered, with a knife connected to the original curse. Like the game of Clue, Robin and her investigator Ken must determine who is the suspect and how did the murder happen.
This is a fun, complex plot with many twists and turns. A bonus is how the attorney-client privilege plays into the plot. Readers of his books will learn a little about the law.
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Author Interview
Elise Cooper: How did you get the idea for the story?
Phillip Margolin: I always have been a voracious reader. I devoured Ellery Queen, Agatha Christie, and John Dickson Carr. I became a lawyer because of Perry Mason, my inspiration. Ellery Queen is the reason I write mysteries with surprise endings. American Mystery Classics, published by Otto Penzler, is reissuing the mystery classics of the 1930s. After I started re-reading these “Golden Age of Mystery” classics I decided to write a story in the same mold, trying to put every cliché into this book. There is a haunted house with a werewolf curse, locked rooms, all the different suspects trapped on a mountain, a butler who might be a killer, and an escaped lunatic, like the game of Clue. I had the most fun writing it.
EC: The story is that the accused got a raw deal?
PM: We have set up our justice system in the late 1700s because of being victims of really mean people, the British mistreatment of colonists. There was a philosophical decision that the person arrested was arrested by mistake, a presumption of innocence. The burden shifts to the state. The focus is never on the victim until the sentencing phrase. Jose, the accused in the book, was found guilty, put-on death row, and we very quickly learn he did not do it.
EC: How would you describe Jose?
PM: Extremely intelligent, hardworking, his family are immigrants. It is a tragedy what happened to him. He was robbed of most of the productive years of his life. He is angry, resentful, and feels the system let him down.
EC: You delve into a little bit of the law?
PM: When the prosecutor turned defense attorney, he found out Jose was innocent. He could not help him get out because of attorney-client privilege. It is an absolute essential part of our justice system. The lawyer must have the client’s confidence that they can be honest. The person can only be represented if the lawyer knows what really happened. I wanted to set up this horrible conundrum. I wanted the reader to think what they would have done, to be put in this position. I also spoke of Habeas Corpus and Statute of limitations. I do this to promote the story.
EC: How would you describe Frank, the former prosecutor?
PM: His life went down the tubes once he found out Jose is innocent. He loved the law but dropped out of it because of his depression. What he has going for him is to free others from prison who had misjudgment. He is remorseful, lonely, and believed in curses.
EC: Your next book?
PM: It is another Robin Lockwood, titled All Dead. An entire family is murdered. It is a who done it where people are trying to figure out who was the intended victim. It will probably come out in November 2023.
THANK YOU!!
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BIO: Elise Cooper has written book reviews and interviewed best-selling authors since 2009. Her reviews have covered several different genres, including thrillers, mysteries, women’s fiction, romance and cozy mysteries. An avid reader, she engages authors to discuss their works, and to focus on the descriptions of their characters and the plot. While not writing reviews, Elise loves to watch baseball and visit the ocean in Southern California, with her dog and husband.
Today I am sharing my Feature Post and Book Review for HERO HATERS by Ken MacQueen on this Partners In Crime Book Tour.
Below you will find a book description, my book review an excerpt from the book, the author’s bio and social media links, and a Kingsumo giveaway. Enjoy!
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Book Description
He seeks redemption, others want revenge
Jake Ockham had a dream job, vetting nominees for the Sedgewick Medallion-the nation’s highest civilian award for heroism. His own scarred hands are an indelible reminder of the single mother he failed to pull from a raging house fire; her face haunts him still. Obligations drag him back to his hometown to edit the family newspaper but attempts to embrace small-town life, and the hot new doctor, are thwarted by unknown forces. The heroes Jake vetted go missing and he becomes the prime suspect in the disappearances. Aided by resourceful friends, Jake follows a twisted trail to the Dark Web, where a shadowy group is forcing the kidnapped medalists to perform deadly acts of valor to amuse twisted subscribers to its website. To save his heroes, Jake must swallow his fears and become one himself…or die in the attempt.
Genre: Adult Thriller Published by: The Wild Rose Press, Inc Publication Date: October 2022 Number of Pages: 366 ISBN: 9781509243853 (ISBN10: 1509243852)
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My Book Review
RATING: 5 out of 5 Stars
HERO HATERS by Ken MacQueen is an exciting thriller that was impossible to put down! The Dark Web has a new pay per view site where a man who hates “heroes” makes kidnapped proclaimed heroes perform heroic acts for their lives. Make time for this one because it will keep you turning the pages. I believe this is the author’s first thriller and I hope it is not his last.
Jake Ockham works as a journalist on his family’s small-town paper and on the side investigates people nominated for the Sedgewick Medallion which is the nation’s highest civilian award for acts of heroism. Jake, himself was nominated many years previously, but never felt himself a hero because while he saved the son from a raging house fire, the mother perished right before his and the surviving daughter’s eyes.
As Jake tries to impress the new and beautiful doctor in his small town, he finds himself becoming not the hero, but the villain in the eyes of law enforcement as Medallion winners go missing. With the help of his college roommate, Erik who is a brilliant cyber investigator, the friends follow a twisted path on the Dark Web and Jake must face a shadow man while also facing his own fears in an attempt to become a hero once again or die trying.
Twisted, scary and dark and yet also completely believable. The back and forth between the different characters about what makes a hero and who should be considered one is very thought provoking. Jake is a flawed and yet likable main character, and the antagonists are truly evil. I loved this fast-paced plot, and it just became more and more intense as it reached the climax. Absolutely riveting thriller with great characters.
I highly recommend this thriller and cannot wait to see what Mr. MacQueen writes next!
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Excerpt
Prologue
Spokane, Washington, August 2019
Local hero Anderson Wise can’t remember the last time he paid for a drink at Sharkey’s.
Nor can he remember an embarrassing assortment of the women who selflessly shared their affection, post-Sharkey’s.
As for that last blurry night at the gin mill, he wished to hell he’d stayed home.
The bar’s owner, Sharon Key, hence Sharkey’s, took joy in chumming the waters on Wise’s behalf for a regular catch of what she called “Hero Worshippers.”
She saw getting him laid as partial repayment for saving her eleven-year-old grandson Toby’s life some eighteen months back.
A disaffected dad, high on crystal meth, stormed into Toby’s classroom to take issue with his kid’s latest report card. He showed his displeasure by shot-gunning the teacher, then reloaded and asked all A-students to identify themselves. Being A-students, they dutifully raised their hands, Toby among them.
As the high-as-a-kite shooter herded the high achievers to the front of the class, Wise, the school custodian, charged into the room armed with a multipurpose dry-chemical fire extinguisher. He blasted the shooter with a white cloud of monoammonium phosphate, to minimal effect, then slammed the gun out of his hands. It discharged into the floor sending several pellets into Wise’s left foot. Thoroughly pissed, Wise ended the drama by pile-driving the extinguisher into the shooter’s face.
Sharon Key, a widow in her early sixties, subsequently replaced the beer signs and dart board with blow-ups of the laudatory press Wise earned during the tragic aftermath. The front of the next day’s local paper held pride of place. It carried a photo of Wise, extinguisher in hand, under the headline: Greater Tragedy Averted as Hero Janitor Extinguishes Threat. The story contained a pull quote in large font which Wise came to regret: “ ‘It’s a versatile extinguisher,’ the modest 30-year-old explained, ‘good for class A, B and C fires—and meth-heads’.”
Said famous extinguisher now guards the top-shelf booze behind Sharkey’s oak-and-brass bar.
New stories were added to Sharkey’s wall five months back after Wise was awarded, with much publicity, the Sedgewick Trust Sacrifice Medallion— one of the most prestigious recognitions of heroism that American civilians can receive.
Wise’s liver and a lower part of his anatomy took a renewed pounding in the weeks thereafter. So much so he declared a moratorium on visits to Sharkey’s for reasons of self-preservation.
He was back in the saddle a month now, but his attendance was spotty. “This hero stuff,” he confided to Key one night, while slumped in his chair. “Maybe it’s too much of a good thing?”
“Ya think?” Key muttered as she took inventory of that night’s limited offerings.
It wasn’t just the women. Men often bought him drinks too, happy to bask in the reflected glory of a proven manly man.
Two weeks ago, some weedy academic from back east interviewed him at Sharkey’s and staked him to an alcohol-fueled dinner at the city’s best chop house. The brainy one expected Wise to opine on such things as “neo-Darwinian rules for altruism.”
Asked him if he’d been motivated by “a kinship bond” with anyone in the room?
Er, no.
Wondered if Wise knew that a disproportionate number of risk takers are working-class males?
Nope, sorry.
And had he calculated in the moment that a heroic display of “good genes” would make him a desirable mating partner?
Cripes. Really?
“Don’t know what I was thinking,” Wise said, swirling a glass of something called Amarone, a wine so amazing angels must have crushed the grapes with their tiny, perfect feet. “Heard a gun blast, grabbed the fire extinguisher off the wall. Saw the dead teacher, all those kids, and a nut with a shotgun. Did what anybody would do. I spent three years in the army after high school, mostly in the motor pool. Much as I hated basic training, maybe some of it stuck. Who knows?”
The academic gave a condescending smile and called for the bill, his hypothesis apparently confirmed.
Wise fled to the restaurant toilet and took notes on the back of his pay slip. Back home, he Googled the hell out of studies on “extreme altruist stimuli,” on “empirical perspectives on the duty to rescue,” and after many false starts, on theories of “Byronic and Lilithian Heroes.”
He kinda got the concept of “desirable mating partner”, but he was pretty sure his dick didn’t lead him into that classroom. Did it?
While not a reflective guy, Wise had to admit it was creepy to reap the fleshy benefits of his few seconds of glory while his dreams were haunted by visions of teacher Adah Summerhill slumped over her desk, blood pooled beneath her. So much blood. With the shooter sprawled unconscious, Wise gently lifted Adah’s head.
She had no pulse and her eyes, once so vibrant and expressive, were as empty as an open grave. She’d always been nice, and totally out of his league.
So, here he was, back at Sharkey’s, mind made up.
Key arrived at his “courting table” and set down his Jack and ginger ale.
“Gave my notice at the school,” he told her. “Getting outta here for a while. Got that Sedgewick money to spend. Someplace they don’t know me. Mexico, maybe.
Or Costa Rica.”
Key patted his hand. “Knew this was coming, Andy.
You banged every eligible female in town, pretty much.
And some who shoulda been out of bounds. I’m amazed the Tourist Bureau doesn’t list you as a top-ten attraction, up there with the botanical gardens.”
“All I want, Shar, is to be liked for me, not for something I did because I happened to be in the wrong place at the right time. Or is that the other way ’round?”
“Hey, you’re a good-looking guy. Still got that shaggy blond baseball player thing going for ya.
Might’ve taken a run at you myself if my hips weren’t shot.” She patted his cheek. “Made you blush. Now don’t turn into a beach bum down there. Always thought you aimed too low, mopping floors and washing windows for the school board. Time to stretch—”
She craned her neck toward the door after it opened with a bang. “My, my, here’s one for the road. She was in earlier, asking after you.” Key aimed a nod at the door and whispered, “Don’t strain anything.” And headed to the bar.
Wise looked up and…sweet Jesus.
Early twenties, he guessed. His eyes roamed from strappy sandals, up a long expanse of tanned bare legs to a glittering silver dress that started perilously high-thigh and ended well below exposed shoulders. The ripe promise of youth was on full display, like she’d dipped her bounteous curves in liquid lamé.
She drew every eye in the place as she undulated to his table. Full red lips, high cheekbones, chestnut hair piled high. Up close now, her gimlet eyes were at once innocent and knowing, like a debauched choirgirl.
“Hi, hero.” Her voice was low and sultry, as he knew it would be. She remained on her feet, hands on the table, leaning low to full effect. “When you finish that drink, I really want to see your medal.”
**** He remembered her mixing drinks back at his apartment while he retrieved his medallion from the sock drawer in his bedroom. He remembered her running a sensuous thumb over the bas-relief portrait of Philip Sedgewick as she read aloud the inscription: “The most sublime act is to set another before you.”
That wondrous voice lingering over “sublime act,”
like it was lifted from the Kama Sutra.
And like too many times, post-Sharkey’s, damned if he could remember her name—that evil bitch. He awoke, bouncing in the back of a van, hands and legs cuffed to rings set in the floor. A broken-glass headache served notice of every bump in the road.
Another lost night at Sharkey’s.
Wise had a dreadful feeling he’d never be back.
Chapter One Aberdeen, Washington, July, one month earlier Jake Ockham was one kilometer in, one kilometer to go and already in a world of pain. Lungs, legs and palms, always the damned palms, screaming enough already.
He’d whaled away on his Concept II rowing machine for thirty minutes, building up to this. Stripped off the sweatshirt after ten minutes, the t-shirt after twenty-five. Down now to running shoes and gym shorts, his torso gleaming with sweat despite the morning chill.
He’d rested after a thirty-minute warm-up to gulp water and to consider the need to reinforce the pilings under the creaky wooden deck before it dumped him and the ergometer into the Wishkah River below. Might leave it in the river mud if it came to that.
Full race mode now, one kilometer in, another to go.
The erg’s computer showed the need to pick up the pace to break the six-minute barrier, something he’d regularly shattered a decade ago during his university rowing days.
Thrust with the legs, throw back the shoulders, arms ripping back the handle. Return to the catch and repeat.
Five hundred meters to go. Eyes fixed on a duck touching down on the river, looking anywhere but the screen.
Two hundred and fifty meters. Faster. Harder. Don’t lose the technique.
Fifty meters. You can do this.
A final piston thrust of legs, shoulders, arms and…six minutes, thirteen seconds.
“Fuck!” His roar startled the duck into flight.
He slumped over the machine, gasping for air, ripping at the Velcro tabs of his gloves, throwing them on the deck in disgust. Hated those damned gloves, so essential these days.
Head bowed, he heard the cabin’s door rasp open.
“Such language.” Clara Nufeld, his aunt, and technically his boss as publisher of the Grays Harbor Independent, leaned against the doorframe.
He didn’t look up. “Don’t bother knocking. Make yourself at home.”
“I did, and I am. Got a couple of things to show you.
Right up your alley. Might be pieces for next week’s issue.”
She was lean and tall, in tight jeans and a faded Nirvana sweatshirt, her spiked white hair cut short. At sixty-four, she still turned heads. Jake knew her age to the day, Clara being his mother’s identical twin. Connie, his late mother, fell to breast cancer at age forty-five.
So much of his mother in Clara. So much that when Jake finished high school and rode his rowing scholarship east to Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University, his father, Roger Ockham, moved his accounting business to Bend, Oregon. Said it was for the golfing, but Jake suspected the sight of his late wife’s twin was a constant reminder of his loss.
Connie and Clara, fresh out of university, worked for their father at the Independent, Clara on the advertising side, Connie as a reporter.
They took the helm of the paper after Derwin Nufeld—their dad, Jake’s grandfather—collapsed and died mid-way through crafting a fiery editorial on a mule-headed decision to pull The Catcher in the Rye from the high school library.
After Connie’s death, Clara did double duty as editor and publisher until she succeeded six months ago in luring Jake home to Washington State from Pittsburgh to take over as editor-in-chief.
This five-room stilt home, Clara’s former cottage on the tidal Wishkah, was his signing bonus.
One of the dwindling numbers of real estate ads in the Independent would describe the cabin something like: “A cozy oasis on the Wishkah, surrounded by nature and just minutes from the city. Fish from your deck while contemplating the possibilities for this prime riverfront property. A bit of TLC gets you a rustic getaway while you make plans for your dream home.”
After years in urban Pittsburgh, he awoke now to bird chatter and the sights and scents of the moody, muddy Wishkah—its current pulled, as he was pulled, to the infinite Pacific.
Jake gathered his shirts and gloves and cringed at a sniff-test of his underarms. “I’ll keep my distance.” He waved Clara inside. “What’s up my alley?”
She waved two dummy pages, the ads already laid out, plenty of blank space for him and his skeleton staff to fill with stories and photos.
Jake was still adjusting to small-town journalism, covering at least one earnest service club luncheon every week, puffy profiles of local businesses, check presentations, city council and school board meetings.
And jamming in as many names as possible. He’d done some summer reporting for the weekly during his high school years, but rowing had occupied most of his time.
Clara handed off a page proof with a boxed advert already laid out. “A new doctor is taking over old Doc Wilson’s practice, thank God. I swear the last medical journal that old man read was on the efficacy of leeches and bloodletting.”
Jake nodded. Worth a story for sure. A few words from Wilson about passing the scalpel to a new generation, then focus on Dr. Christina Doctorow. No hardship there.
The ad for her family practice included her photo.
Rather than the cliché white coat and stethoscope she wore hiking shorts and a flannel shirt with rolled sleeves, thick dark hair in a ponytail, a daypack hanging off a shoulder. A husky at her side gazed up adoringly.
Smart dog.
Jake put her at early thirties, his age more or less. He nodded approval. “Sporty. A fine addition to the Grays Harbor gene pool.”
“The woman’s a firecracker. Spent ten minutes haggling down the price. I finally caved. Said I’ll bump this up to a half-page, but you owe me a free checkup.”
“Seriously?”
“What she said, too. Also asked ‘Is that ethical?’ I said, ‘darling, I’m in advertising. You want ethics, deal with my nephew on the editorial side.’ “
Jake laughed. “Pretty good at bloodletting herself.
What else you got?”
“This is so up your alley.” She handed him a classified ad page-proof. “You being an expert.”
Jake slumped onto a kitchen chair. “On what?”
She tapped a one-column boxed ad in the lower left, “Heroes.”
“Not hardly.”
He looked closer and reared back. The heading read: “For Sale. Rare Sedgewick Sacrifice Medallion. $100 OBO.”
There was a thumbnail photo of the medal’s obverse, showing the craggy face of Philip Sedgewick, a leading member of the long-dead school of industrialist robber barons. He’d amassed a fortune in textile mills, newspapers, and exploitive labor practices. Awash in cash he came to philanthropy late in life. Like others in this elite group—Carnegie, Mellon, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, et al—their names and reputation-burnishing generosity live beyond the grave.
Sedgewick, at his wife’s urging, chose to celebrate extraordinary acts of heroism. He used eight of his many millions—an enormous sum in 1901—to endow a family trust to award exceptional heroism with the Sacrifice Medallion and needs-based financial assistance. Over the past one hundred twenty years, the trust awarded some eleven thousand medallions, an inspiring legacy of courage, and yes, sacrifice.
The grainy photo in the classified ad was too small to read the inscription under Sedgewick’s stern visage, but Jake knew it well. It was a quotation by the English poet William Blake: “The most sublime act is to set another before you.”
Below the photo was a post office box address, and “mail inquiries only.”
Jake shook his head. “This is nuts. The price is insanely low, insulting really. The medallions are kinda priceless.”
“I wondered about that,” Clara said. “The ad cost fifty dollars so not much of a profit.”
“The rare few that get to auction can fetch in the thousands. We try to buy them back, prefer that to having them land up in the hands of the undeserving.”
Clara cocked an eyebrow. “We?”
Jake shrugged. “I still do the occasional freelance investigations for Sedgewick. The thing is, there’s never a good reason to sell these. Either the recipient is dead broke, or dead without relatives to inherit it. Or it’s stolen.”
“Or,” Clara said, resting a hand on Jake’s shoulder, “the hero feels undeserving.”
He flinched. “Was there a photo of the medal’s back? It’d have the recipient’s name and the reason it was awarded.”
“Don’t even know who placed the ad. Arrived in the mail: a photo, the ad copy, and a fifty-dollar bill. No return address but the post office box.”
“Pull the ad, Clara. I’ll buy it and return the money.
There’s a story here, something’s not right.”
Clara toyed with her car keys. “I feel bad sometimes, guilting you back. Do you miss it, your old life back in Pittsburgh?”
His pause was barely discernable. “Great to be back in the old hometown.”
“Great to earn half the salary you did in the big city?
Great to prop up the family business? Great to be stuck with your old aunt?”
“Aunt doesn’t cover it. I was twelve when Mom passed. You stepped up for Dad and me.”
She looked like she was about to say something, then shook her head and flashed an enigmatic smile. “A topic for another day. Gotta run.”
She leaned across the table, took his hands in hers, running her thumbs lightly over his scarred palms. She raised his hands to her lips for a kiss, then turned for the door.
Excerpt from Hero Haters by Ken MacQueen. Copyright 2022 by Ken MacQueen. Reproduced with permission from Ken MacQueen. All rights reserved.
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Author Bio
Before turning to fiction, Ken MacQueen spent 15 years as Vancouver bureau chief for Maclean’s, Canada’s newsmagazine, winning multiple National Magazine Awards and nominations. He traveled the world writing features and breaking news for the magazine, and previously for two national news agencies. Naturally, he had to make Jake Ockham, his hero, a reporter, albeit a reluctant one. MacQueen also covered nine Olympic Games and drew Jake’s athletic prowess from tracking elite rowers in training and on podiums in Athens, Beijing and London. He and his wife divide their time between Vancouver, and British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast.
