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The bank’s newest Trust Officer Terri Stanley prepares the requested department’s internal audit. Finding puzzling inconsistencies and a jumble of misappropriations and unexplained offshore accounts, she follows protocol and immediately punches in the listed number for the Executor-Trustee, Craige Ingram.
Wealthy land owner/parttime PI Craige Ingram reaches the file back to homicide Lt. Grayson MacGerald after finishing a quick read-through of the preliminary forensic report from Coroner Fred Dinkins on the unexpected death of bank President Royce Sedgewicke. Dinkins’ meticulous autopsy findings verify that a massive apparent heart attack was not from natural causes, confirming what these longtime SEAL buddies suspected.
When Ingram gets a call from Terri Stanley, the bank’s attractive, newly-hired Trust Officer, wanting to discuss in confidence possible account irregularities discovered during her audit, he never imagines the twisted world of money and greed that would involve a psychopath’s trail of bloody body parts strewn along Ingram’s river property, or that Terri and her son would disappear.
Confronted by a race against time, Ingram fears that Terri might become one more on the list of dead who crossed a twisted mind bent on thrill-kills and retribution.
Read an Excerpt
Death is seldom dignified, even less so if it’s felony murder. There was no such thing, exSEAL-turned private investigator Craige Ingram believed, but he sometimes forgot how personal death could get. This time, however, it blind-sided a lot of people—including him.
For the annual charity event of the Silver Bluff Museum of Southron Art, the master of ceremonies grandious CEO Llewyn Royce Sedgewicke and PI Craige Howelle Graeme Roynane Ingram seldom moved in the same black tie social circle. Chances were slim to none that Royce Sedgewicke would’ve ever been invited to the sprawling riverfront domains that had once been Grannie Ingram’s dogtrot Moccasin Hollow that she left debt-free to her gran’son Craige.
Unlike his collection of mounted big game trophies along the walls of his profligate mancave, portly Royce Sedgewicke’s food-bespattered tuxedoed carcass stretched out like public roadkill amid the crash and smash of food, china, crystal and splayed floral pieces, and very dead. Last-breath gurgles clung around his gagging tongue as smart phones madly clicked, flooding social media before the emergency ambulance arrived. First edition headlines the next morning made big local news and an avid up-tick in morning papers. Purloined forensic photos of his corpse showing Sedgewicke’s swollen tongue and his bare overstuffed derrière grabbed a growing audience for more about his secretive lifestyle, squandering what little decorum he never had. That mess was bad enough. His passing sent more than a few local bigwigs scrambling to cover their backsides—and their offshore accounts.
Complications and felony murder cinched more-snug when Graysen MacGerald, head of Buckingham Parish Metro Law Enforcement, Investigative Support Team, paid an off-the-record visit to his grown-up-together SEAL Commanding Officer Craige `Peadinger’ Ingram. The death certificate said heart attack. It wasn’t.
About the Author
Internationally acclaimed author and public speaker, Hawk MacKinney began writing mysteries for his school newspapers. Following graduation, he served in the US Navy for over 20 years. While serving as a Navy Commander, he also had a career as a full-time faculty member at several major state medical facilities. He earned two postgraduate degrees with studies in languages and history and has taught postgraduate courses in both the United States and Jerusalem, Israel.
In addition to professional articles and texts on fetal and adult anatomy, 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.
Known for his terrifying suspense and unique “Southron” dialog, Hawk has published five novels in the Moccasin Hollow Mysteries: Hidden Chamber of Death, Westobou Gold, Curse of the Ancients, Dead Gold, and Blood of the Dragonfly.
In a change of direction, Hawk has also published three books in The Cairns of Sainctuarie science fiction series: The Bleikovat Event, Volume I; The Missing Planets, Volume II; and The Inanna Phantom, Volume III.
His latest work is a series called the Moccasin Trace Mysteries. Dungeon of Horrors is the first book in the series, and the second book – Blood in the Shadows – is in development.
Buy the book at Amazon.
A detective has a smooth-talking heartbreaker for a client, but there’s a problem.
P.H. Turner (Pat) writes contemporary mysteries spiked with long-held grudges, secrets, and murder. With roots in a Texas farm homesteaded in the 1850s, she calls Austin home. When she’s not writing, she’s cooking for family, or taking care of a pair of hairy mutts, or in her garden coaxing roses to bloom in the Texas heat. 
Seeker: As societies grow increasingly fragmented, hopelessness, nihilism, and division are on the rise. But there is another way—a way of mystery and magic, of wholeness and transformation. Do you dare take the first step? Our path is not for the faint-hearted, but for seekers of ancient truths…
I believe in free-will, and that we all can make a difference. I believe that beauty blossoms in the conscious life, particularly with friends, family, and strangers. I believe that genre fiction has become generic, and it doesn’t have to be.
Nick Forte has lost his detective agency and makes ends meet doing background checks and other paperwork. He pays for everything else through jobs he takes for cash and without any written contract. What starts out as a simple investigation into a traffic accident exposes Forte to people who have truly lost everything and have no viable hope of reclaiming their lives. That doesn’t sit well with Forte, leading him and his friend Goose Satterwhite to take action that ends more violently than anyone expected.
Off the Books is Dana King’s sixth Nick Forte private investigator novel. Two of the earlier books (A Small Sacrifice and The Man in the Window) received Shamus Award nominations from the Private Eye Writers of America. Dana also writes the Penns River series of police procedurals set in a small Western Pennsylvania town, as well as one standalone novel, Wild Bill, which is not a Western. His short fiction appears in numerous anthologies and web sites. He is a frequent panelist at conferences and reads at Noirs at Bars from New York to North Carolina. 
A town on its knees, dread’s bony fingers wrapping around its throat and squeezing, death rattles soon to follow.
Mark Towse is an English horror writer living in Australia. He would sell his soul to the devil or anyone buying if it meant he could write full-time. Alas, he left it very late to begin this journey, penning his first story since primary school at the ripe old age of forty-five. Since then, he’s been published in over two hundred journals and anthologies, had his work made into full theatrical productions for shows such as The No Sleep Podcast and Tales to Terrify, and has penned fourteen novellas, including Nana, Gone to the Dogs, 3:33, and Crows. Chasing The Dragon is his debut novel.
