VBT: Westobou Gold by Hawk MacKinney

Westobou Gold

by Hawk MacKinney

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

GENRE:  Mystery/Suspense

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

BLURB:

The Indian Queen would risk torture and worse to keep her secrets from these barbarians in suits of metal and their search for cities of gold. They never found the gold. Empires rose; empires fell, the centuries passed. Legend became fireside myths, but no treasure was ever found. Yet, among the grey-green drapes of wisteria and wild jasmine along the misty shrouded lowlands of bayous and marshes of the Westo River, the folktales persisted.

In the lazed creep of a near-tropical dawnlit the pungent Turkish coffee permeated Moccasin Hollow. Beyond the kitchen door Lucky, Craige Ingram’s German shepherd gnawed a favorite bone. Looted burial mounds seemed a world away until plundered mounds on Moccasin Hollow land brings amateur archeologist PI Craige Ingram into the crosshairs of kidnapping. Stealthy hideaways are concealed in old colonial brick-lined river grottos beneath the big house of Ardochy plantation. Sex-tape underage blackmail and thrill killings on federal land spur a medical examiner’s preliminary postmortem to more than a hired cleaner’s quickie cover-up passed off as drug deals gone sour. Greed tangles a witch’s pigswill of illicit affairs and murder-to-hide-murder. Shady investigators and shadier politics stir an unexpected concoction that threatens the lives of those at Moccasin Hollow in a spiteful plot against ex-SEAL Craige Ingram and the woman he loves.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Excerpt One:

His life would have been a lot longer if Johnny Crockett had ever learned that just about anybody could do things the easy way. Blessed with brains, no-boundaries imagination, and little-to-no street sense, it made the shortcuts too easy. He never worked for things he liked, ‘specially if it meant he had to sweat. Johnny was made for trouble. Johnny was greedy. The more money he had, the bigger a man it made him.

He slowed the old pickup to a stop at the edge of the canebrake clearing. Sea-blue shifty-mean eyes cut sharp and cunning as he checked for any uninvited snooping eyes. He brushed the sandy brown lock of hair back from a rugged face that had been called handsome. It was a damning gift, one he bent to his advantage anytime he wanted someone else to cover his backside.

The slippery red-clay ruts mired in a once-upon-a-time gravel road curved up toward the house. The extended eaves of the porches of the great age-worn house that was Redcliffe shadowed its tall windows. Gaunt un-curtained windows gaped like empty eye sockets in a sun-bleached skull. Johnny couldn’t keep his bone-deep trepidations at bay. The old lady had been dead for a number of years, but her cantankerous overseer was very much alive. Crockett half expected the wrinkled, toothless old man to burst out one of the doors, carrying the same long-barrel shotgun as last time. The man had threatened to gut-shoot him if Johnny trespassed again. Johnny hadn’t forgotten. He kept Redcliffe and the peeling stucco hunting lodge located behind it at a distance.

The hunting lodge was the first Redcliffe built nearly a hundred years ago. Eventually the mixed-up facts of the new Redcliffe and the old yard became known to the locals as Ardochy, named after a long forgotten Scottish grandmother whose maiden name was McArdy.

Folks there’bouts still talked about the McArdy family. “Whole McArdy clan was tetched in the head. Comes from bedding down with too many cousins. Kids’re funny looking, pinch-nosed and squat necked with wrinkly, whitish, chicken-skin bodies.”

Folks talked. “Was a god-sent blessin’ most’a them died ‘fore they hardly could walk.” Chugged a big swaller of a cold beer, “Never could’a growed into nuthin’ what could take care of itself.”

During afternoon teas church ladies abuzz amid dainty sips of Methodist cough medicine or homebrew brandy, their talk had nothing to do with facts. They just liked to ogle while they tittle-tattled.

Johnny didn't trust barely nobody, and except for a few, most didn’t trust Johnny Crockett. He should've stuck to what he knew best—bein’ lazy and sneaking beers from the cases on the delivery truck making its daily runs to local joints, including Mother’s Bar.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Internationally acclaimed author and public speaker, Hawk MacKinney began writing mysteries for his school newspapers. He served in the US Navy Reserve for over 20 years, and was a tenured faculty member at several state medical facilities, teaching postgraduate courses in both the United States and Jerusalem, Israel. Since retiring Hawk has authored several novels that have received national and international recognition. Moccasin Trace, a historical novel, was nominated for the prestigious Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction and the Writers Notes Book Award. The Cairns of Sainctuarie, his science fiction series, includes The Bleikovat Event and The Missing Planets, with a third book in the works. Hawk’s latest project focuses on The Moccasin Hollow Mystery Series. Book 1 in the series, Hidden Chamber of Death, was released early 2016.

http://www.hawkmackinney.net/

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100011826991252

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/698008.Hawk_MacKinney

Author Interview by Hawk MacKinney

Where do you get inspiration for your stories?

There’s no one thing to foreshadow when a tale clicks from about any place one can think of…settings or a name or title, a spoken conversation in restaurants, grocery stores. Characters don’t have to be created. The multitude of shapes, hair styles, eyes, voices, actions are swarming all over crowded places – I just watch and scribble madly.

How did you do research for your book?

Mainly with the help and suggestions of Reference Librarians…the Internet is a big crutch, but only if sites and subjects are referenced and can be verified. Otherwise it’s a weed-jungle. Reference Librarians scare me…there are NO secrets from those experts. Local libraries are my haunts – several times a week – especially when plots and scenes are being jig-sawed into place.

Do you have another profession besides writing?

Both military and postdoctoral faculty in the US and Israel. When I retired, I began thriller mayhem and loosing my fantasies across the cosmos.

If you could go back in time, where would you go?

That’s sor’ta like, “Would you like to go back to your teens or early twenties?” Yes—BUT only if I could take with me what’s been learned from my mistakes. Now is an interesting pivotal point in history for lots of space-time places/happenings. It’s kind’a fun sittin’ back and watching us flounder toward success/survival…or not.

What is your next project?

Two manuscripts are in edit…one is Book 3 in The Moccasin Hollow Mystery Series and the other is Volume III in the science fiction series, The Cairns of Sainctuarie. Both series have serial characters, spanning generations of families.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

GIVEAWAY INFORMATION and RAFFLECOPTER CODE

Hawk MacKinney will be awarding a $25 Amazon or Barnes and Noble GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

a Rafflecopter giveaway