Author Description

Minding his own business. Sipping his whiskey. Halfway down the second half of the bar, alone, as he liked it. And then – who should come into Eddy’s Café in the midst of a snowstorm in this small city on New England’s South Coast but a face from the past. “It was a face I knew, though my time-numbed senses weren’t registering. I looked at her through the mirror as she untied the yarn of an old-fashioned wool hat from under her chin, the kind nobody’s worn since 1960 unless they lived north of Bangor. She slid it off and shook the wet ends of her dark hair. She stared at me as I stared at her reflection, our eyes not meeting. Then it clicked. I knew this girl from a lifetime ago. We had worked together up in Manchester, a couple of jobs and a decade or so back. I was the cops reporter, and she worked the copy desk. What I remembered most was we had slept together once in each of the three years I was there. The last time as a present to ourselves before I left to go to Portland. But for the life of me, I couldn’t think of her name.” Monique’s brother is missing, gone five days. Local police have nothing, yet, but time is running out. She remembers those years ago when Peter MacAlister, her on and off romantic companion, used his unique sense of deduction to help the police locate a missing girl. She needed him to do it again. She just drove a hundred miles through a blinding snowstorm to find him. She needed him to find her beloved Charlie, before he was gone for good. Charlie was an outdoorsman, an independent spirit, an eccentric mind in a youthful body, who would take off into the elements at a moment’s notice. But he always returned, until now. A survivalist club. A biker bar called Axe Max. A yuppie bar called Rue Appetit. A girlfriend called Pudding. A kinky party crowd. Cops, reporters, and a social-climbing nemesis. Oh, and a brutal murder. Just some of what Peter encounters as he dedicates himself to finding Monique’s brother, who has disapp