 Coming Soon... Squeeze Plea Squeeze Plea is a mystery novel set in the Inland Northwest. In it, legal investigator Brody Carlisle eagerly anticipates a trip to the coast for salmon fishing. Instead he's thrust onto the team defending a high profile executive charged with first-degree murder. The accused man had a perfect -- but useless -- alibi: At the time of the murder he was miles away paying off his blackmailer. Although the evidence against him is weak, he abruptly accepts on offer to plead to a lesser charge of manslaughter because prosecutors have discovered a family secret which a jury would interpret as an obvious motive for murder. Shortly, a wrongful death suit is filed against him and his firm by the victim's relatives. Carlisle probes backgrounds in preparation for the civil trial, believing he'll uncover the identity of the real killer. But others have conflicting agendas -- a caregiver exploiting the executive's past mental breakdown, plaintiff's attorney pursuing a devious windfall, even the executive's wife desperately hiding her daughter's paternity. Three more murders occur before Carlisle, hindered by his own idealistic mindset, fully comprehends and exposes the remorseless mastermind who has manipulated victim and criminal alike for the chance of a gigantic payoff. |
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Despite the numerous favorable reviews received from readers of the Squeeze Plea manuscript, including Sheldon Siegel, author of the legal thriller series for Putnam, the previous agent failed to place it. A more energetic campaign to market the novel is pending while a new agent is sought. |
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Thin Game The story of Brody Carlisle continues as he copes with mounting medical bills arising from his accident at Felts Field. Luckily, attorney Hammet Munsing needs a resourceful investigator to help clear a beautiful woman accused of embezzling from FitForm Corporation, producer of a bestselling appetite suppressant. (She happens to be the company's CFO.) The ink is barely dry on Carlisle's contract when he learns a guard at the FitForm lab was mysteriously murdered a year earlier, although there seems to be no connection to the embezzlement. Carlisle finds it peculiar that Jot Sharber, the flamboyant medical doctor who heads FitForm, insists on the CFO's innocence. Equally puzzling is the attitude of Dr, Sharber's top executive Norris Bellinghaus, who appears to have grudges against both Sharber and the CFO. Carlisle's probing of the embezzlement is abruptly interrupted when Bellinghaus is found shot to death at FitForm's headquarters. The case is further clouded when Carlisle learns of a dark secret in the life of an executive's wife. After struggling to uncover the identity of "Falchion," who's left emails demanding money on Dr. Sharber's computer, he concocts a deceptive plan. It's a dismal rainy night when he deposits a briefcase empty of money in the trunk of a parked car on a lonely street corner in Spokane. Then the plan starts to fall apart. |
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J.B.'s short story "Where's Del?" appeared in Futures Magazine (Futures Mysterious Anthology Magazine, V6, n29, pp. 73-75). The accompanying illustration is J.B.'s work. The following is an excerpt from that story. |
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"Where's Del?" |
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It
wasn’t just the floor lamp with a pleated shade and cast iron feet in
the shape of lion’s claws that worried me.
Or the heavy lace curtains, or even all the overstuffed chairs
with those rounded arms straight out of the 1930s.
Mrs. Del McBade, her overstuffed body crushing the upholstery
opposite me in the McBade living room—she worried me.
I
said, “Eight-hundred-seventy large.
That’s a bunch of toaster strudels.”
She
shrugged. “Easy come, easy go.”
“But—” “Money’s just money, Settler. I don’t care about it. I want you to find Del. Find out what happened. Maybe he’s just drunk. Why’d you think I called you?”
“Sure.
But gone three months, and you not hearing? Unlikely that’s a binge.
With all that cash gone, he could be out there living it up.
Florida, Vegas, you name it.”
She
shook her head. “I know Del. Last
thing he said was, ‘Brian Lynnbert stole my money, and I’m gonna kill
him.’ ”
“He
could’ve just made that up—that Brian Lynnbert conned him out of the
money.”
“I
watched Del sign the papers. Del
said it gave Family Investors Services the ‘power of
turning’—whatever that is. The
company promised it would put the $870,000 to work, turn it into a real
fortune. But six months
later, this Lynnbert fella calls Del, says the ’vestment didn’t work
out, the money’s gone.”
She
gives me the eye. “Besides,
Del’d never lie about killing a man.”
“Sure.
But Lynnbert’s body hasn’t showed up.
And that’d count as murder.
Del wouldn’t murder a man, would he?”
“He
was right upset.”
“Okay.
But there’s my fee. I
don’t look into missing persons for nothing.
Settler’s got to live too, you know.”
“Get
the fee from Family Investors Services.
Or Lynnbert, if Del ain’t killed him yet.
Some of that money’s bound to be around somewheres.”
“You
don’t care about the return of the money—at all?”
“We
gots along just fine before Uncle Carl passed and Lynnbert talked Del out
of the money. But I’m not sleeping, not knowing about Del.
Dead or drunk, I gots to know.
Ain’t that what the Settler’s supposed to do?”
“All
right, Mrs. McBade, I’ll find him.”
I got up to leave.
She
didn’t smile. She didn’t get up. “I’ll
be waiting,” she said. |
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Her
husband Del had inherited $870,000 from his uncle Carl, a carpet
wholesaler who’d died a closet millionaire.