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Print, soft cover ISBN 978-1-897445-45-7: E-book ISBN 978-1-897445-08-2: |
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GUNSHOT ECHOES
What follows a gunshot after the noise dies away? The echoes are not all audible. The bullet cannot be recalled. Someone's life is changed, seldom, but sometimes, for the better. GUNSHOT ECHOES is a collection of fictional accounts dealing with guns and the aftermath of shootings. It is not a social commentary on the right, or not, to bear arms.
The Outlander, a novella of South Africa
When David Stone, an American who has adopted South Africa as his home, answers the telephone he is sure it is his boss and owner of Private Computers International, Alex Becker, calling from the United States, nine time zones away. David does not realize at the time just how far his upscale lifestyle is about to tumble when the caller identifies herself.
The beautiful Marjie van der Luen is an engineer for the South African electric power company. Her technical alliance has been important to PCI's success, but she wields an even more intimate influence on David's personal life. David has lost track of her for two years, and now she is just a scratchy telephone line away, and David remembers. Marjie remembers too. She remembers David's reckless promise that he will kill for her, and she’s calling in the favor.
The intended victim Diana Craighall, while unknown to David, turns out not quite a stranger. After gaining entry to her home through subterfuge, David discovers that Diana is the fiancée of his employer, Alex Becker!
Following the murder, David discovers that Marjie has set up a strategy to blackmail him, or perhaps to expose him as the killer. To protect himself David sacrifices Marjie to the authorities, and in the process murders twice more.
Through it all, David manages to conceal his involvement. However, Alex isn't convinced of David's innocence, and relieves him of his position with the company. While David is sorting out his crumbling circumstances, Marjie's friends kidnap and punish him for his treatment of Marjie.
The Short Stories
The "Mexican Holiday" is anything but as it unravels into an international kidnapping and drug smuggling terror. The protagonist is a travel magazine freelance writer who, with the aid of some friends and fellow travelers, saves the day for, and most of the lives of, a tour bus full of panicked vacationers from north of the border.
"Hambone Calls the Tune." Bonaparte Hammond is the new cop on the detective force, faced with investigation of a shooting that becomes the first in a sequence of murders. He masquerades as "Hambone," a newspaper music critic, in his attempt to unmask the killer, as the investigation leads the detective through the halls of country music.
"The Clay Pigeon" is a police procedural investigation and resolution of the shooting death of an international sportsman. Set in the Niagara Falls region, the story takes place in a skeet-shooting venue in which hundreds of participants from around the world bring hundreds of shotguns to the competition, and one of those guns is the murder weapon.
"Hobby House" is a publishing company in trouble that has nothing to do with the price of paper or print. The old owner-publisher steps down, his son steps up and steps on some toes, causing a writer and an editor to step forth with murder on their minds. A cop captain who can't remember names writes finis to the whole unwholesome chapter.
"A Murder for the Book" is a blueprint for, and completion of, the perfect murder, carried out by a world renowned murder mystery author who is well acquainted with leaving clues, or not leaving them at all. The story revises a historic adage that could be translated thusly: "Beware of friends bearing gifts."
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