HELLO DEAR READERS!
I'm sending this email to you as Bookfunnel or StoryOrigin recipients of The Trouble, which follows detective Adam Kincaid and Catholic nun Jane Grey in tense pursuit of a ritualistic, border-hopping serial killer during the Irish civil war known as the Troubles.
As I noted a few emails back, I'd be asking for reviews and ratings when The Trouble appeared on Amazon. The paperback edition is there now, with the Kindle version to follow.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/173364413X
If you have read The Trouble, please do leave a rating, review, or both on this Amazon page. Ratings and reviews are the life blood of indie book sales; they do most of the heavy lifting yesterday's book and literary critics once handled, and they mean a lot more to authors and readers.
THE TROUBLE
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/173364413X
So far, Goodreads has not listed the book, but it will be another option for ratings/reviews at some future point. Here's a short excerpt from The Trouble.
“YOU LOOK LIKE YOU’RE in hot pursuit of a fleeing question,” Sr. Grey said.
Kincaid smiled. “I’ve been reading that book you gave me. Says burnings were reserved for women and Protestants.”
“Do we know any more about the third victim?”
“Every bone in her body was ripped from its joints and sockets. Before she was burned.”
“Sounds like she was racked,” Grey said. “How ghastly. And still no idea who she is. Was, rather.”
“M. E.’s hoping for a dental match.”
Kincaid picked up Reformation Saints. “Speaking of racks, Baldwin’s killer or killers used the bookshelf ladders in the Long Room to replicate the rack Plunkett was drawn and quartered on. ‘Dragged, usually by horse, on the rack, to the place of execution,’” Kincaid read from Reformation Saints.
“The horse outside the library,” Sr. Grey said. “Oliver Plunkett, Archbishop of Armagh. How much do the current archbishops know about all this,
I wonder?”
“Might not hurt to inform them,” Kincaid said.
“Or warn them,” Grey said.
SISTER GREY DROVE THE cramped Ford Zephyr with her eyes up and her head down, lowered reflexively when the first helicopter buzzed overhead.
“You’re getting into the routine of things,” Kincaid said.
“And you’re not crouching low enough,” she said.
She raised her head when they approached a checkpoint, where a British soldier stuck his nose in the car demanding their business and any papers they might have to support it. Variations on, “A garda? Here? Why?” were the most common questions Kincaid answered, some delivered with more seething than others.
“I lay in bed, hearing bombs or bullets somewhere,” Grey said as they continued onward. “The other sisters count them like sheep. The first question at breakfast repeats like the machine guns. ‘Who did we know was killed last night?’ They always know someone.”
She parked on Castle Street in Armagh and looking up the street and down it, again and again, unloaded Kincaid’s folded wheelchair from the back seat. She looked through the fence at the cathedral.
“I’m sorry I’m not much help,” he said.
“It’s light and I’m strong,” she said. “And you can still be a sentry.”
She helped him into the chair and they went around to the open gate and along a flat, narrow drive to the entrance. The cathedral’s verger met them near the tall, arched front doors.
“Inspector Kincaid, Sister Grey. Welcome.”
“Thank you for arranging this.”
“I can’t take much credit,” the verger said. “Archbishop Simms was eager to meet you. He’s been following these killings.”
THE TROUBLE AT AMAZON
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