Here’s an excerpt from my next book, “A Field of Red.” For more excerpts and up-to-date book release information, check out the Book Page and check back for more!
Frank Harper sat in a dark corner of Ricky’s, a dingy bar in the downtown historical district of the rural Ohio town of Cooper’s Mill. He was nursing a beer, looking up every time anyone entered the establishment. It was a habit he couldn’t break.
Frank was a solid man in his mid-50s; not old, but not young anymore. He had the trim and sinewy frame of a man who worked out regularly, if only out of habit. The short, dark hair atop his head suggested a police or military past, but the unkempt hair was longer and shaggier than any cop would have worn it. His age was betrayed by the weary lines on his tired face. He looked worn, spent, his face darkened with five days’ worth of dark stubble. He also looked like the kind of man who knew how to throw a punch and how to take one.
The bar was bigger on the inside than he’d expected—a wide space filled with low tables surrounding the central wooden bar, with seating on all four sides. Several televisions hung from the walls, amid a collage of bar decorations: neon signs, pinup girls and other pictures of scantily-clad women advertising something or the other, posters for local sports teams, and beer and liquor advertisements. Above the bar hung purple and green pennants, remnants from some long-forgotten Mardi Gras celebration. He was probably the only person here to notice the familiar colors.
The floor was dirty linoleum, the lighting low and dingy, and every window was covered. From the outside, it had looked like a strip club. Brisk air from outside occasionally wafted in as customers came and went, breaking up the smoke. It was a non-smoking restaurant, as was every other restaurant in Ohio, evidently, but it looked like Ricky’s, and its patrons, hadn’t gotten the memo.
Frank Harper had arrived in town only hours ago and settled into the Vacation Inn by the highway. He had needed a shower after traveling, and the drive up from Birmingham had been a long one. It had been ten hours of boring, with the radio broken in the Taurus; he didn’t have the money to get it fixed. The jury-rigged CD player, hooked into the car’s speakers, and a stack of jazz and blues CDs would have to do. Benny Golson and Earl Hooker, Coltrane and Ervin had kept him company, with a little Pinetop Perkins thrown in for good measure.
