The Ambitious Card by John Gaspard

About the Book

Magician Eli Marks is the top suspect in a series of murders. His greatest trick? Not becoming the next victim. 

★★★★★

Psychics are being murdered and all the clues point to magician Eli Marks: one of his playing cards keeps turning up at every crime scene. What begins as a simple Halloween magic show turns into a deadly cat-and-mouse encounter as the body count rises while Eli frantically attempts to clear his name.

It doesn't help that his ex-wife's new husband is the lead Homicide Detective on the case. Or that Eli appears to be the only thread tying all the murders together.

Then things get really complicated when romance blooms with a beautiful psychic who may—or may not—hold the final clue to this murderous mystery. Eli can't help but be drawn to her, even though falling in love in the midst of a murder spree is never a good idea.

As all the pieces of this deadly puzzle begin to fall into place, Eli must use every trick he knows to uncover the true killer … before he becomes the final victim.

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Excerpt

Ask anyone and they’ll tell you I’m generally a positive person. But even I had to admit, this was a bad situation.

After the heavy wooden door closed behind us with an unforgiving finality, I’d come to a sudden insight — when it comes to being in the dark, there’s dark-dark and then there’s inside-a-cave dark.

We were definitely in the latter.

I’d never been in a place so dark, where the blackness of the space jostled up against us like an aggressive, surly crowd on a subway during rush hour.

My head was spinning from the lack of oxygen and even though I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face, I was starting to see spots in front of my eyes. My lungs ached with each breath I took, the carbon monoxide that filled the cave a poor substitute for the oxygen I’d foolishly taken for granted until this relatively late point in life.

We shuffled and slogged through the inky darkness. My foot slipped on a loose rock, hurdling me forward, where a stalagmite — or is it a stalactite? — connected with my forehead, breaking my fall. My head was now covered with small scrapes and contusions, and in the darkness I couldn’t tell whether it was blood or sweat running down my face. I imagine it was a pretty even mixture of both.

Oh, and did I mention the bats? Well, I don’t know how I could have forgotten them.

The flurry of winged pests had been just as surprised to encounter us as we had been to encounter them, leaving us the warm and sticky recipients of a rich shower of bat guano. It covered our hair and shoulders, a warm stream that slithered down my spine, making me wish I could actually remove my skin and send it out for cleaning. And as luck would have it, moments after the first battalion departed to points unknown, we were hit with yet a second wave of bat pee, the furry winged bastards slicing across the tops of our heads while their piercing screeches whizzed past our ears.

Even though I had more pressing concerns at the moment, I once again rebuked myself for getting us into this situation. It could have been avoided, I really think it could have.

Things would have turned out quite differently, I’m convinced, if I’d closed my act with something other than The Ambitious Card.

Had it been the cups and balls or the linking rings or a cut and restored rope or any of a hundred other tricks, I might be sitting home in front of the television right now happily munching popcorn, instead of asphyxiating in a cave while marinating in bat pee. But, as they say, hindsight is twenty/twenty, a lesson I appear to be learning and re-learning every day — even in the deadly pitch blackness of this stupid cave.

About the Author

John is author of the Eli Marks mystery series and the Como Lake Players mystery series. He also has four other stand-alone novels: “The Greyhound of the Baskervilles,” “A Christmas Carl,” “The Sword & Mr. Stone” and “The Ripperologists.”

He hosts two podcasts: "Behind the Page: The Eli Marks Podcast," and "The Occasional Film Podcast."

In real life, John's not a magician, but he has directed six low-budget features that cost very little and made even less - that's no small trick. He's also written multiple books on the subject of low-budget filmmaking. Ironically, those books made more than the films.

John lives in Minnesota and shares his home with his lovely wife, several greyhounds, a few cats and a handful of pet allergies.

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