About the Book

An unlikely alliance: the Cop & the Village Patrol Officer. Humorous police procedural with a touch of romance

A forest fire burns in a remote California mountain village, followed by the discovery of the mayor who has been beheaded. Sheriff’s Detective Dex Stafford concludes everybody loathed the mayor for very good reasons, but nobody will talk. His nerves fraying, Stafford finds himself involved with his partner’s hysterical daughter at a time when he fears his partner is on the take. His mother moves in with him, bringing a Jack Russell who hates him, and stories about his father he doesn’t want to hear.

Patrol Officer Holly Seabright of the village’s security force becomes a prickly and unwilling ally. Patrol's usual day involves calls about snakes, fistfights, barking dogs and checking up on old people. That's the way she likes it. And she doesn't like Stafford, the Bakersfield city slicker cop.

A twisted tale of discovery unfolds as winter and the big snows shut down the town when an environmental bomb explodes.

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Excerpt

The parking lot by the golf course was already jam-packed, and more cars were arriving for the outdoor concert on the greens. Cars lined both sides of the road through the village center, curving all the way around the road that surrounded the town hall. Guys dressed for a good time were still arriving in wife-beater tank tops, shorts, straw hats, and flip-flops. Dads carrying coolers, moms and kids with strollers, geezers pushing through with golf carts, dogs frisking around, everybody heading to the concert on the golf course. Everybody wanted to get a good spot and pound down a few beers before the concert started at eight p.m. Newcomers streamed across the road, blocking traffic.

A lot of people didn't know about the fire yet, which was just as well. Holly parked the patrol vehicle in front of the community center next to the town hall.

A ten-year-old kid ran towards Holly. She recognized him as one of the latchkey kids who hung out after school in the games room at the community center. He had the hang-dog look of a kid who was always picked on. He pointed to the tiny lake in the curve of the golf cart path where the fairway met the rough.

“Um, my skateboard. The kids threw it in the pond again.”

The golf course lay behind the town hall and the community center. Huge stone boulders shaded by a stand of willow trees were an out-of-bounds sanctuary for kids to hide where they could make out, smoke cigarettes, and drink beer and whatever else. The restless crowds waiting on the greens for the concert to begin were five hundred yards away to the left.

“Jeremy, this is the third time we've fished it out for you.” Holly sighed. "I can't get it for you right now. There's too much going on.”

“It's just that I can see a hand, and like bare feet in the pond.”

“Oh, c'mon. What?”

“Yeah, one of the feet's got part of the leg attached, sticking out of the water.”

“Are you pullin' my chain?” She looked hard at him. Kids who played video games had a distorted sense about what was real. He shook his head. “Okay, show me.”

Holly looked overhead first to make sure the chopper wasn't on its way in to fill up again. This she had to see. Glancing at the side of the mountain where the fire had broken out, she didn’t see any flames now. Black smoke billowed up into the sky.

Jeremy ran ahead of her to skirt around the edge of the pond to the far side. The choppers had brought the level of the water down a good way, but even from the near side of the pond, Holly saw a bare foot with a length of hairy bare shin attached. The shin ended in splintered bone. As she approached the location, she saw another foot fallen on its side and sunk into the pond slime near the edge. A hand lay at the pond's edge next to the feet, the fingers curled in supplication, chopped off at the wrist, the bones splintered at the cut.

Discipline kept Holly rooted to the spot. This was a real human hand once attached to a real human body, sawed off and flung into the water near the edge of the pond. She shooed Jeremy behind her.

“See? See?” Jeremy said. His face was white and strained. The kid was used to being disbelieved.

Heart beating fast, Holly thumbed on the radio. "Unit Four to Unit One. Come in, Ed.”

“Unit One. Where are you? I need you. Over.”

“I'm at the upper pond,” Holly said, trying to keep her voice even. “You need to come down here right now. Come by yourself. Right now.”

There was a silence. Ed knew she didn't give him orders.

“Right now,” she repeated, her voice breaking.

About the Author

First of all, thank you to my readers. I write to enjoy living the life of characters I’d like to know. Or characters I’d like to be. Wouldn’t I like to be 29, 5 ft 10, and hot, hot, hot. Wouldn’t I like to chase bad guys down dark alleys and mouth off to a cop. Wouldn’t I like to be a homicide detective in a glitzy tourist city like Santa Monica. You betcha I would.

I write to tell stories I hope will entertain you. Some are gritty, but they are all leavened by a touch of snarky humor.

I’ve learned a thing or two after writing four unpublishable novels and then seven modestly successful crime fiction novels, plus the recent one, Nothing Ever Happens Here.

I wrote hundreds of thousands of words to teach myself how to write something people would want to read. It takes practice and learning the craft.

Then I put everything I’d heard, and learned through hard experience, into seven short eBooks on the craft of writing mysteries.

The companion volumes on the elements of crime fiction are available on Amazon and they’re cheap.

Writing Your First Mystery is a free download on my website. http://marpreston.com

The kindest thing you can do for any author is to leave a review.

To my dismay, I've become quite old, having lived hard 30 years in Los Angeles, another 20 in a village in the surrounding California mountains. A few years ago, I came home to Canada. specifically Ottawa, Ontario. It's been quite a jaunt - so far. I can just about stand the Canadian winters.

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