Shadow of a Thief
by Norman
Green
GENRE: Fiction/Mystery
& Detective
BLURB:
Combining
his pitch perfect voice for the characters who live in New York's underbelly
with a compelling new protagonist, Norm Green’s Shadow of a Thief grabs you by
the throat and doesn't let go
In a previous life,
Saul Fowler was a thief-for-hire with an impressive client list, including the
US government. When he seeks shelter from his addictions up on the coast of
Maine, his past come back to haunt him in the form of his estranged stepfather,
Reverend McClendon. “Someone killed my daughter,” says the rev. “Find out who
did it Saul, I know you can help me. Please?” None of this would be Saul's
problem, except that the girl might be his half-sister.
Back in NYC, a place
he never thought he’d see again, Saul delves deep under the surface of the dead
girl’s life. Before long he finds himself contending with gangs, pimps,
prostitutes, the NYPD, and just maybe, the fifth fundamental universal force.
Finding the truth will either change his life forever, or end it.
Gritty and
unputdownable, this is perfect for fans of James Lee Burke and Robert Crais.
Excerpt:
You never knew when you were gonna
fall in love, or with whom.
She was Nigerian. Her name was Aniri and she was the most
beautiful person Corey had ever known, surely the sweetest, the kindest, the
sexiest, the most wonderful thing God had ever put legs under. Okay, sure, she was black and he was white
and that might be viewed as a problem by some, particularly by his
never-been-north-of-the-Mason-Dixon-line mother, but either she would adapt and
accept Aniri or she wouldn’t, and Corey was okay with that. And nobody in Batesburg was ever going to
hear that she once worked as a call girl.
And okay, Aniri didn’t have a green card but Corey was sure that he
could find a work-around for that, hell, people did it all the time. No, the real problem was that Aniri was,
essentially, owned and operated by the escort service that occupied the top two
floors of the Hotel Los Paraiso on 10th Street.
Corey was no pushover and he was not without courage but he knew when he
was in over his head. The men who ran
the escort service were out of his weight class and, even after months of
racking his brain, he still had no idea how to pry Aniri out of their clutches.
Aniri, though, had a plan, and that
was why they were walking south on Avenue D at eleven-thirty on this particular
Thursday night. “Babe,” Corey said. “Are you sure about this? A witch doctor? If my grandmother could see me now...”
Aniri whirled to face him. “Corey Jackson, you have no idea how hard
this is for me! It’s costing me two
thousand dollars to see this guy!”
“Two thousand bucks! Now I know you’re crazy!”
Aniri grabbed a handful of his
shirt. Corey could feel her
trembling. She pulled him close and
hissed in his face. “Corey, this could
be my only chance. Now we’re going to go
see this man, and I want you to keep your trap shut. When your mouth opens the only sounds I want
to hear are ‘Yes sir’ and ‘Yes maam.’ If
the word ‘witch’ or ‘doctor’ comes out of you I will kill you myself. I need this, Corey. We need this.
You know I don’t ask you for a lot...”
It was true. “But Babe, those guys in Los P are
Chinese. They probably don’t even
believe in this shit...”
“They believe in pain! And we are going to bring them some.”
He had never seen her this adamant
before, or this scared. She released her
grip on his shirt and tried to pat out the wrinkles she’d made. “Okay, baby,” he said. “I’ll do this. For you.”
“Do it for us,” she told him, and
she popped the collar on his jacket, even though she knew he hated it. “And try not to look like you’re from South
Carolina, just for an hour or two.”
He sighed. “Yeah.
Sure.” At the next corner they
turned off the well lit avenue and into the relative gloom of Eighth Street. They were almost to the end of the block,
steps from Avenue C when Aniri stopped in front of a tiny store front. It was painted a dull, powdery red but the
door was black. There was a display of
dust-covered African masks in the single window. Aniri pushed open the door, bells jangled,
and they entered.
There was a woman behind a tiny
counter and she murmured something in Yoruba, Corey knew it was Yoruba because
Aniri murmured something back, her fear clouding her voice.
There was a skull on a shelf
nearby. It looked like a human skull,
and if it was a reproduction, it was damned accurate. The lower jaw was missing. Two of the molars on one side had been
implants, they stood away from the bone on tiny steel studs. This can’t be real, Corey thought, and he
inched closer, peering.
“Don’t touch anything!” Aniri
whispered harshly.
Corey Jackson put his hands in his
pockets and began to pray.
AUTHOR Bio and Links:
Norman
Green reports this about himself: "I have always been careful, as Mark
Twain advised, not to let schooling interfere with my education. Too careful,
maybe. I have been, at various times, a truck driver, a construction worker, a
project engineer, a factory rep, and a plant engineer, but never, until now, a
writer." He lives in Emerson, New Jersey, with his wife, and is hard at
work on his second novel.
Purchase
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Thanks for hosting!
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