Some Kind of Truth by Westley Smith

 

SOME KIND OF TRUTH

by Westley Smith

April 8 - May 3, 2024 Virtual Book Tour

Synopsis:

A mysterious video. A cold case. A reporter hunting for answers to both.

Pittsburgh crime reporter, Steve James, returns home to find a mysterious package waiting outside his apartment door. At first, Steve fears the package could contain a deadly threat from a local mob boss pressuring him to retract his story, which helped put him behind bars. Instead, Steve finds a junior driver’s license belonging to Rebecca Ann Turner, a teenager who went missing from a party twenty-five years ago, and a USB flash drive containing a video of her murder.

Horrified by the contents inside the package, Steve is determined to find out what happened to Rebecca and why someone dragged him into uncovering this mystery. But as Steve sifts through the clues and weaves his way around those trying to prevent him from exposing the truth, he continues to struggle with personal issues stemming from his time as a war correspondent in Afghanistan, where he was filmed being tortured and nearly executed by the Taliban, making what happened to Rebecca all the more personal.

Some Kind of Truth Trailer:

Book Details:

Genre: Mystery, Thriller
Published by: Wicked House Publishing
Publication Date: February 2, 2024
Number of Pages: 336
ISBN: 9781959798309 (ISBN10: 1959798308)
Book Links: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

Read an excerpt:

CHAPTER ONE

The package was marked…

ATT: STEVE JAMES of the PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE

…and wrapped in brown butcher’s paper as if it were a poor-man’s version of a Christmas present.

Steve had received anonymous packages before, some with leads to run down, others with incriminating evidence from a source he was working with. However, this package had not been delivered to the Pittsburgh Tribune like it should have been. It was left outside his apartment door.

Perplexed, Steve lifted the package, gingerly, from the floor. It was light and about six inches long by four inches wide. He shook it, but nothing moved inside.

He had not been expecting a delivery, certainly not one to his home by an anonymous person. His guts tightened into an uncomfortable, disconcerting knot. Turning, he looked down the hallway, to where the back stairwell led out to the rear entrance of the apartment building. Sunlight shone through the single window at the end of the hall and cut a sharp blade-like angle of light onto the floor. Dust particles floated in the air as if recently disturbed – maybe by the deliverer of the package.

Someone could have gotten into the building by the rear entrance, made their way up to Steve’s apartment, dropped the package by his door, and slipped back out before anyone noticed. He did not live in one of the new high-rises being built around Pittsburgh – apartments that came with all the security bells and whistles – but rather an old turn of the century building on the lower east side of Pittsburgh. The rent was cheap, and the landlord damn-near nonexistent, especially when it came to the safety and upkeep of the building. It was what Steve could afford on a reporter’s salary.

He looked back at the parcel in his hands. The sense of unease continued to coil his stomach. Was he being targeted like reporters after 9/11, with anthrax-sealed packages delivered to their homes and offices? Possibly.

The fact that his article “MOB IN PITTSBURGH” had helped put Anthony Palazzo, a local money launderer affiliated with the New York-based DeLuca Crime Organization, behind bars could have something to do with the mysterious package outside his door that afternoon. Again, he wondered what was inside and cautiously shook it, like a kid trying to figure out the present under the wrapping on their birthday.

Nothing moved, nothing rattled inside.

Steve knew he should leave the package alone; place it back on the floor where he found it, call the police, and have them look at it first. That was the smart thing to do. The right thing to do. There could be anything inside meant to bring him harm, especially nowadays, when reporters were being unfairly besieged for spreading false information to the public.

Against his better judgment, Steve forced the apprehension away like a fly at a picnic, tucked the bundle under his left arm, fished his keys from his jacket pocket, and opened the apartment door.

Once inside, he closed the door and peered through the peephole to the hallway. Still, the hall was empty, and no one passed by. Again, he felt the skin on the back of his neck prickle, and the hairs stand on end with nervousness.

Why was the package left and what was inside? Steve wondered.

Turning away from the door, he moved into the kitchen. He placed his laptop bag on the counter beside his keys, then removed a Zippo lighter and a pack of cigarettes and placed them beside the laptop bag. He put the brown package beside his things. It looked odd on the countertop, as if it were some evil present that had been left at his home – a gift from Satan himself.

There was nothing out of the ordinary with its appearance. Other than the handwritten address, there were no other identifiable words or labels on the outside. Gooseflesh rose across Steve’s body. Whoever delivered the package knew who he was, where he worked, and where he lived.

Normally, Steve had all large packages sent to the Tribune’s mailroom. He didn’t trust his landlord, Horace Baker. The slimeball charged an extra ten dollars a month to hold deliveries larger than what could fit into the small gold mailboxes in the lobby. He called it a ‘holding charge.’ Steve was sure it was illegal, a scheme to get more money from the tenants.

Steve was not about to pay the extra money. He had heard stories from others in the building that when they received their packages some were opened, searched, and sometimes things were missing. Of course, Baker claimed it was how the parcels arrived.

This particular package, sitting ominously on his countertop, should never have made it to his floor.

Or maybe it IS from Palazzo, Steve thought. It could have been a scare tactic to get Steve to retract his story, setting Palazzo free from prison, while simultaneously clearing the DeLuca Family of any wrongdoing. For all Steve knew, there could be a small explosive inside the box, just big enough to rattle his cage but not kill him. Or, if they wanted to get the job over with, they could have laced it with anthrax, just like reporters received after 9/11.

Yet, he wasn’t so sure Palazzo or the DeLuca Family were ready to make that kind of move against him. At the moment, Palazzo and the DeLuca Family were letting their mob lawyers handle the process through the courts with a defamation and source exposure lawsuit on Steve and the Pittsburgh Tribune.

No, Steve was confident it was delivered by someone else. But who? And more importantly, why?

He pulled a bottle of Jameson Irish Whiskey from the cupboard along with a small glass and poured himself a healthy snort.

Just to quiet the demons, Steve thought bitterly, taking a swig. Just to quiet the demons.

He studied the package while swirling the brown liquor around in the glass, knowing he should leave it alone and call the police. But intrigue was sinking its fangs into his mind, poisoning his thoughts with fantasies of what dwelled inside its dark recesses.

Someone knew Steve well enough to know he could never leave a mystery alone. He thumbed one of the cigarettes out of the box, popped it into his mouth and lit it with the Zippo lighter. He inhaled deeply. Smoke filled his lungs. Calmed his nerves. Helped him think straight – so he thought.

What’s inside? a shadowy voice spoke from the alcoves of Steve’s mind, pulling him from his reverie. He could not argue with this strange, archaic voice. He desperately wanted to know what was inside the package. Taking a long drag on the cigarette, he let the smoke out slowly between his teeth with a low sssss.

What to do? What to do?

There was only one thing to do.

Setting the cigarette in the ashtray, Steve picked the package up. He felt that familiar chill of disquiet crawl over him, like cold skeleton fingers walking up his spine, vertebra by vertebra.

“Enough of this guessing-game shit,” Steve said and tore the heavy brown paper away, exposing a white box underneath which resembled something a pastry would come in. The lid was sealed shut with a single piece of Scotch Tape.

Steve knew no one would send him sweets – maybe anthrax, maybe a bomb, but certainly not sweets. In a career that spanned more than twenty years as a crime reporter for the Tribune, Steve had made more enemies, like Anthony Palazzo, than friends. Such was the life, he supposed.

He peeled the Scotch Tape from the box and then lifted the lid slowly, as if a venomous snake were about to spring out and bury its sharp fangs into his face. With the box lid cracked, he peered inside.

Instead of finding something harmful, the box contained a USB Flash Drive secured in white tissue paper. Two words were handwritten on the front of the flash drive in black magic marker:/p>

PLAY ME!

Steve frowned. Why would someone send him a flash drive anonymously? Did it have something to do with the Palazzo story he’d spent the better part of two years working on? Some missing information that would, without a shadow of a doubt, ensure that Palazzo stayed behind bars for the rest of his life?

Or was it something unrelated?

Steve didn’t know.

Then he noticed the USB was not the only item inside the box.

Tucked beside the flash drive was a small piece of white plastic. Removing the plastic from the box, Steve found it was about the size of a credit card and coated with a reddish-brown dirt. He rubbed his fingertips together feeling a gritty dust, like a fine sand. Turning the card over revealed it was a Pennsylvania Junior Driver’s License issued to a Rebecca Ann Turner of 428 Water Street, Abbottstown Pennsylvania. Her birthdate was 10/02/1982. The issue date on the card was 11/23/1998 — twenty-six years ago. The top right-hand corner, where the expiration date should have been, was broken, the plastic chipped away, forever lost to time, leaving a jagged edge that looked sharp enough to slice through flesh.

The driver’s license photo of Rebecca Turner showed an attractive sixteen-year-old girl with blonde hair and bright blue eyes that sparkled with life. Her face was long, narrow, and innocent, holding the optimism of youth. Her beaming smile radiated from the picture, enhancing her natural beauty and charm. According to the driver’s license, Rebecca was born in 1982, which would make her forty-two years old now. But Steve got the sickening feeling that Rebecca did not live to see her forty-second birthday.

He looked back to the flash drive resting inside the box. He was unsure how the driver’s license and the USB were connected, but he was certain they were, or they would not have been delivered together.

What’s on the flash drive? Steve wondered anxiously. His heart began to race, and his palms grew moist with sweat. A horrible notion rushed through his mind that something awful had happened to Rebecca Turner, something the USB would ultimately reveal.

“H-holy shit,” he said aloud; the shudder in his voice surprised him. Someone wants you to find out what happened to this young lady, Steve ol’ Boy, and expose the truth.

Reaching for the cigarette in the ashtray, he brought it to his lips and inhaled. The smoke settled on his lungs with a comfortable bite that he relished.

He looked back to the box; his eyes lingered on its contents. Possible scenarios played across his mind as to why someone would want him involved. But none of these thoughts made much sense at the moment.

Steve took another drag and stubbed the cigarette out in the ashtray. He had smoked it down to the filter as he often did; a haze of heavy, thick smoke hovered around the ceiling. He picked up the glass of whiskey and finished it in one swallow, and then poured himself another – three fingers worth this time. His mouth had gone bone dry, but he wasn’t sure another shot – even three fingers worth – would wet his whistle.

The demons inside were growing, and Steve needed to calm them. Or, at least, he continued to tell himself that on a nightly basis.

Warily, he lifted the USB from the box. Dare he view whatever was on it, or call the police and let them handle the situation?

He shook the thought off. His reporter instinct had taken over. He needed to know what was on the USB, how it connected with the girl on the junior driver’s license, and why he was chosen to unravel this mystery before going to the police.

***

Excerpt from Some Kind of Truth by Westley Smith. Copyright 2024 by Westley Smith. Reproduced with permission from Westley Smith. All rights reserved.

 

 REVIEW:  

This book will take you to a place of escape from reality!  Hard to put down and will leave you wanting more!  And I don't mean it's a cliffhanger, I mean this book will have you feeling like it could be a movie!  Not what I expected at the end and have now found a new go to author!

Author Bio:

Westley Smith had his first short story, Off to War, published when he was just sixteen. Recently, he has had short stories featured in On the Premise, Unveiling Nightmares, and Crystal Lake Entertainment. He was the runner-up contestant in the Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine’s “Mysterious Photograph Contest,” where his name was featured in the magazine. He sold his debut thriller, Some Kind of Truth, to Wicked House Publishing, it was released on February 2nd, 2024.

Catch Up With Westley Smith:
Goodreads
Instagram - @wsmithbooks
Facebook - @westleysmith100

 

 

Tour Participants:

Visit these other great hosts on this tour for more great reviews, interviews, guest posts, and opportunities to WIN in the giveaway!

 

 

WIN BIG! Enter Now for Your Chance to Win!

This is a giveaway hosted by Partners in Crime Tours for Westley Smith. See the widget for entry terms and conditions. Void where prohibited.

 

 

Get More Great Reads at Partners In Crime Tours

 

BROADCAST BLUES by R.G. Belsky

 

BROADCAST BLUES

by R.G. Belsky

January 1-26, 2024 Virtual Book Tour

Synopsis:

Wendy Kyle took secrets to her grave— now, Clare Carlson is digging them up

New York City has no shortage of crime, making for a busy schedule for TV newswoman Clare Carlson. But not all crimes are created equal, and when an explosive planted in a car detonates and kills a woman, Clare knows it’ll be a huge story for her.

But it’s not only about the story—Clare also wants justice for the victim, Wendy Kyle. Wendy had sparked controversy as an NYPD officer, ultimately getting kicked off the force after making sexual harassment allegations and getting into a physical altercation with her boss. Then, she started a private investigations business, catering to women who suspected their husbands of cheating. Undoubtedly, Wendy had angered many people with her work, so the list of her suspected murderers is seemingly endless.

Despite the daunting investigation, Clare dives in headfirst. As she digs deeper, she attracts the attention of many rich and powerful people who will stop at nothing to keep her from breaking the truth about the death of Wendy Kyle—and exposing their personal secrets that Wendy took to her grave.

Praise for Broadcast Blues:

"Broadcast Blues is a page-turning, meticulously plotted crime novel enriched by a terrific New York sense of place, Dick Belsky’s wicked sense of humor, and his insider’s view of the Machiavellian world that is broadcast news."
~ Jonathan Kellerman, New York Times best-selling author

Book Details:

Genre: Mystery
Published by: Oceanview Publishing
Publication Date: January 2, 2024
Number of Pages: 320
ISBN: 9781608095315 (ISBN10: 1608095312)
Series: Clare Carlson Mystery Series, 6 | All of the novels in the Clare Carlson Mystery Series stand on their own and can be read in any order
Book Links: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | BookShop.org | Goodreads | Oceanview Publishing

Read an excerpt:

PROLOGUE

From the Diary of Wendy Kyle….

If you’re reading this, I’m already dead.

How’s that for an attention-grabbing opening line?

I know, I know...it’s a bit melodramatic. And I’m not normally the melodramatic type. Really. No, Wendy Kyle is the kind of woman who deals in facts for a living, the kind of woman who doesn’t let emotion cloud her judgment and - maybe most importantly of all - the kind of woman who never blindly puts her trust in anyone.

Especially a man.

Hey, I’m not some man-hating bitch or anything like that, no matter what you may have heard or think about me. I like men. I love men, or at least I’ve loved a few men in my life. It’s just that I don’t trust them anymore.

So wouldn’t it be ironic - or maybe a little bit fitting, to look at it completely objectively - if trusting a man this one time was what wound up costing me my own life in the end.

Here’s the bottom line for me: If I don’t succeed in what I’m about to do in the Ronald Bannister case, well...then it is important someone knows the truth about what happened to me.

And that it was the lies - all of the damn lies men have told - that were the death of me.

----- The contents of this document were among evidence

seized by homicide detectives from the office of

Wendy Kyle Heartbreaker Investigations

218 West 42nd Street

New York City

This entry is listed as: POLICE EXHIBIT A

Opening Credits

THE RULES, ACCORDING TO CLARE

Nora O’Donnell is 50 years old. Samantha Guthrie 51. Hoda Kotb 58, Robin Roberts 62 and Gayle King 68.

The point I’m trying to make here is that TV newscasters - specifically women TV newscasters - don’t have to be cute, perky young talking heads to succeed in the media world where I work.

We’ve come a long way since the days when a respected newswoman like Jane Pauley was replaced by the younger Deborah Norville on the Today show because some network executive (a middle-aged man, of course!) decided Pauley was getting too old to appeal to a television audience.

Or when an anchorwoman named Christine Craft lost her job at a station in Kansas City after a focus group determined she was “too old, too unattractive and not deferential to men.” She was 37.

Well, 50 is the new 40 now.

Or maybe even the new 30.

And let’s get something straight right up front here. I’m not one of those women who normally gets stressed out over every birthday that passes by or every wrinkle on my face or every gray hair or two I spot in the mirror. That is not me. No way. I’m not hung up about age at all.

But I am about to turn 50 this year.

The big 5-0.

The half-century mark.

And the truth is I’m having a bit of trouble dealing with that…

My name is Clare Carlson, and I’m the news director of Channel 10 News in New York City. I’m also an on-air reporter for our Channel 10 news show, and I’ve broken some pretty big exclusives in recent years that have gotten me a lot of attention and made me kind of a media star.

But this whole business of turning 50 still seems odd to me.

When I was in my 20s, I was a star reporter at a newspaper and won a Pulitzer Prize. In my 30s, after the newspaper went out of business, I switched to TV news at Channel 10. And in my 40s, I’ve been juggling two jobs: TV executive as the station’s news director and also as an on-air personality breaking big stories.

Turning 30 and then 40 never really seemed like that big a deal for me. It was more fun than tragic. Look at me: I’m 40! But 50? I’m not so sure about that one. 50 is something completely different, at least the way I see it at the moment. I’m not sure where I go with my life after 50.

It couldn’t be happening at a worse time for me either.

Channel 10, the TV station where I work, is being sold to a new owner - and this has left everyone in our newsroom worried about what might happen next. My latest boss and I don’t get along, and I’m afraid she might be looking for a reason to fire me. My personal life situation is even worse. I’ve been married three times (all of them ending in divorce), and right now I’m not in any kind of a relationship. I have a daughter, but she didn’t even know I was her mother for the first 25 years or so of her life - so we don’t exactly have a traditional mother/daughter relationship.

The only constant in my life - the one thing that I always turn to for comfort when my life is in turmoil - is the news.

This newsroom at Channel 10 where I work is my true home.

My sanctuary.

And so each day I wrap it - along with all the people in it and the stories we cover - around me like a security blanket to protect myself from everything else that is going on around me.

All I needed now was a big story to chase.

The bigger the better.

That’s what I was looking for right now.

But as the old saying goes: Be careful what you wish for – because you just might get it.

And that’s what happened to me with the Wendy Kyle murder…

 

Part I

THE HONEY TRAP

CHAPTER 1

Susan Endicott, the executive producer of Channel 10 News, walked into my office and sat down on a chair in front of my desk.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Talking to you.”

“I mean about tonight’s newscast.”

“Oh, that.”

“Don’t be impertinent with me, Carlson.”

What I was actually doing at the moment was putting together one of those old David Letterman style Top 10 lists. I like to do that sometimes. My topic today was: TOP 10 THINGS AN ASPIRING WOMAN TV NEWSCASTER SHOULD NOT SAY DURING A JOB INTERVIEW. My list went like this.

10. What’s that red light on the camera for?
9. Yes, Mr. Lauer, I’d love to be your intern.
8. I sweat a lot on air.
7. I can name all the Presidents back to Obama.
6. If it helps, I’m willing to get pregnant as a cheap on-air ratings ploy.
5. Katie Couric? Who’s Katie Couric?
4. No makeup, please. I want to let my real beauty shine through.
3. My IQ is almost in three numbers.
2. Can I watch TikTok video during commercial breaks?
And the Number One thing an aspiring woman TV newscaster should not say during a job interview…
1. I have a personal recommendation from Harvey Weinstein!

I wondered if I should ask Susan Endicott if she had any suggestions for my Top 10 list. Probably not. She might call me impertinent again.

“Do you have a lead story yet for the 6 p.m. show?” she asked now.

“Well, yes and no.”

“What does that mean?”

“The lead story is about a controller’s audit raising new questions about the viability of the city’s budget goals.”

“That’s not a lead story for us.”

“Hence, my yes and no reply to your question.”

“Do you have a plan for getting us a good story?”

“I do.”

“What is it?”

“Hope some big news happens before we go on the air at 6.”

“That’s your plan?”

“Uh, huh. The news gods will give us something before deadline. They always do.”

“The news gods?”

“You have to always believe in the news gods, Endicott.”

Looking out the window of my office, I could see people walking through the midtown streets of Manhattan below on a beautiful spring day. Many of them were coatless or in short sleeves. Spring was finally here in New York City after what seemed like an endless winter of snow and cold and bundling up every time you went out. But now it was spring. Yep, spring - time for hope and new beginnings. The sun shining brightly. Flowers blooming. Birds chirping. All that good stuff.

In a few weeks New Yorkers would start streaming out of the city on their way to Long Island or the Jersey Shore or maybe Cape Cod. I thought about how nice it would be to be in a place like that right now. Or maybe on a boat sailing up the New England coast. Anywhere but sitting here at Channel 10 News with this woman. Except I knew that even if I did that, I’d probably wind up sooner or later sitting in another newsroom wherever I went talking about lead stories with some other person like Susan Endicott.

Endicott and I had been at war ever since she came to Channel 10. That was after the firing – or, if you prefer, the forced resignation – of Jack Faron, the previous executive producer who had first hired me as a TV journalist from my newspaper career and had been my boss for most of my time here.

Jack was a top-notch journalist, a good friend and a truly decent human being. Susan Endicott was none of those things. She was an ambitious career climber who had stepped over a lot of people in her efforts to score big ratings at the stations where she worked before. That’s what had landed her the Channel 10 job here in New York, and she was determined to keep her star rising no matter what it took for her to do that. She had no friends that I was aware of, no hobbies or interests, no outside life of any kind. She was completely focused on the job and on her career advancement.

For whatever its worth, I didn’t like the way she looked either. She wasn’t fat or skinny, she wasn’t pretty or unattractive, she was just…well, plain. Like she didn’t care about her appearance. She wore drab clothes, hardy any jewelry, no makeup that I could see. It was like her appearance simply didn’t matter to her.

Oh, and she wore her glasses pushed back on top of her head when she wasn’t using them. I disliked people who did that. I know it sounds crazy, but that’s the way I feel. It was the perfect final trait of Susan Endicott though. I detested everything about her. And, as you can see, she wasn’t too fond of me either.

There were two things that had prevented her from getting rid of me so far.

I’ve broken some exclusive stories that got us big ratings. She did like the fact that I was an on-air media star, even if she didn’t like me. So all I had to do was keep finding exclusives.

Also, the owner of Channel 10, media mogul Brendan Kaiser, had backed me in any showdown with Endicott since she arrived here. Always good having the big boss on your side when you’re at odds with your immediate boss. But Kaiser was in the process of selling the station. We weren’t sure yet who the new owner would be. Maybe it would be some great journalist or wonderful human being that would care about more than profits. But people like that don’t generally buy big media properties like a TV station. So I was prepared for the worst once the new owner was in place.

That meant I needed to keep on breaking big stories.

And I hadn’t done that in a while.

I needed to find a big story in a damn hurry.

“You better come up with a good lead before we go on the air at 6 tonight,” Endicott said as she stood up and said over her shoulder as she started to leave my office.

“Or?” I asked.

“Or what?”

“That sort of sounds like you were giving me an ultimatum. As in ‘or you’re suspended. Or you’re fired. Or your cafeteria privileges are suspended. Or you need to get a permission slip to go to the bathroom. Or…”

Endicott turned around.

She glared at me.

Then she pushed her eyeglasses – which she’d been wearing – back on top of her head again.

A nice touch.

Perfect for the moment.

“Keep digging that hole for yourself, Carlson,” she said to me. “It will make it so much easier when the time comes to get rid of you.”

“You have a nice day too,” I said.

As things turned out, it didn’t take very long to find a news lead for the show.

After Endicott left, Maggie Lang – the assignment editor and my top assistant – burst in to tell me we had a big murder that had just happened.

“Someone blew up a woman’s car!” she said excitedly. “On a busy street in Times Square. The victim’s name is Wendy Kyle, and she’s a former New York City cop and a controversial private investigator who’s been involved in a lot of high-profile divorce cases recently. Involving rich people, important people and catching them in sex scandals. Sounds like someone was out for revenge against her. Sex, money, power. This story has everything, Clare!”

Yep, the news gods had saved us again.

***

Excerpt from BROADCAST BLUES by R.G. Belsky. Copyright 2023 by R.G. Belsky. Reproduced with permission from R.G. Belsky. All rights reserved.

 

 

Author Bio:

R.G. Belsky is an award-winning author of crime fiction and a journalist in New York City. His newest mystery, BROADCAST BLUES, was published on January 2 by Oceanview. It is the sixth in a series featuring Clare Carlson, the news director for a New York City TV station. The first book, Yesterday’s News, was named Best Mystery of 2018 at Deadly Ink. The second, Below the Fold, won the Foreward INDIES award for Best Mystery of 2019. Belsky has published 20 novels—all set in the New York city media world where he has had a long career as a top editor at the New York Post, New York Daily News, Star magazine and NBC News. He also writes thrillers under the name Dana Perry. And he is a contributing writer for The Big Thrill magazine and BookTrib.

Catch Up With RG Belsky:
www.rgbelsky.com
Goodreads
BookBub - @dickbelsky
Instagram - @dickbelsky
Twitter/X - @DickBel
Facebook - @RGBelsky

 

 

Tour Participants:

Visit these other great hosts on this tour for more great reviews, interviews, guest posts, and opportunities to WIN in the giveaway!

 

 

JOIN IN ON THE GIVEAWAY

This is a giveaway hosted by Partners in Crime Tours for R.G. Belsky. See the widget for entry terms and conditions. Void where prohibited.

 

 

Get More Great Reads at Partners In Crime Tours

 

The Dick Thornby Thrillers & Giveaway

 

 

Net Impact

A Dick Thornby Thriller Book 1

by Donald J. Bingle

Genre: Spy Thriller, Action Adventure

Dick Thornby is not Hollywood's idea of a spy. He's a new kind of spy for a new kind of world.

In his rough and tumble job there are no tailored Italian suits, no bimbos eager to please, and no massive underground fortresses built by evil overlords seeking world domination—just an endless series of sinister threats to the safety and security of the billions of mundane citizens of the planet. Sure, Dick's tough and he knows a few tricks to help him get out of a tight spot, even if his boss accuses him of over-reliance on explosives. But he's also got a mortgage, a wife upset by his frequent absences on "business" trips, and an increasingly alienated teen-age son who spends way too much time playing in gaming worlds on the computer.

When a mission to bust up an arms exchange in New Zealand goes spectacularly bad, Dick is thrown into a maze of conflict involving Hong Kong arms dealers, cyber-criminals, Chinese government goons, and even militant Maoris. When a young computer expert back at the Philadelphia headquarters for The Subsidiary, an international espionage agency created in the aftermath of 9/11, discovers that the bad guys are involved in a vast conspiracy. Dick is forced to partner with the espionage neophyte to battle evil on multiple fronts, leading to a final confrontation that incorporates real-world conspiracy theories and cutting-edge technology.

In the end, Dick can save his partner, save his marriage, save his son, or save the world, but he can't do it all.

Says Spy Guys and Gals: "What a terrific ride ... action, great characters, interesting twists, and enough suspense to make you both hold your breath and turn the page"

Says Game Knight Reviews: "This is a spy novel that intersects with the world of MMORPGs and combines a set of topics I haven’t seen before. It is a bit of The DaVinci Code with some James Bond and a modern virtual reality spin."

Available in trade paperback, ebook, and audiobook versions.

Want to continue the action? Look for Wet Work, the next adventure in the Dick Thornby Thriller series by Donald J. Bingle. Flash Drive, the third book in the series, is coming soon. Want more action? Check out the author's other thrillers: Forced Conversion; GREENSWORD; and Frame Shop.

**On Sale for Only .99 cents!!**

Add to Goodreads

Amazon * B&N * Kobo * Audible

Wet Work

A Dick Thornby Thriller Book 2

Dick Thornby is not Hollywood's idea of a spy. He's a new kind of spy for a new kind of world.

Dick's not a supercool guy in a tuxedo or a crazed loner who does nothing but kill and drive fast. He's just a regular guy with some skills for a job that needs doing. He also has a wife, a teenaged kid, a mortgage, and all the mundane problems associated with life. His friends from the New Jersey subdivision where he lives all think he is a wastewater treatment consultant. But instead of dealing with the dirty job of processing sewage in third world countries, he is really on missions, some mundane and dirty, others of vital importance and even dirtier.

After taking personal revenge on the criminal behind both his son’s injuries and the continued disintegration of his marriage, Dick Thornby is teamed with Acacia (“Ace”) Zyreb, a young, female agent from the East European office of the Subsidiary, to deal with the mystery behind coordinated hacking of the braking systems of several car models.

Doing his best to maintain his vows to his wife, Dick struggles to deal with the inexperience and provocative attitude of Ace on her first non-European mission. Their somewhat combative investigation takes a left turn by uncovering a much more sinister threat to the world and to Dick's family. He's willing to risk his job, his partner, and his life to eliminate the threat, but the clock is ticking.

Here's what Spy Guys and Gals had to say about Net Impact, the first book in the Dick Thornby series: "I love spy novels. I devote my hobby time to them. I write about them on my website. When I find a series that I really enjoy, I am delighted and that word most definitely applies to this series. It has action, great characters, interesting twists, and enough suspense to make you both hold your breath and turn the page (digitally in my case). I like Dick Thornby and I like reading about him and I hope to continue to do so."

Explosions! Action! Spycraft! Car Chases! Thrills! Mysteries! Conspiracies! Globe-Trotting! Sexual Innuendo! More Explosions!

Now available, Flash Drive, the third installment in the Dick Thornby Thriller series.

From the author of Net Impact, plus other fine thrillers, including Forced Conversion, GREENSWORD, and Frame Shop.

Add to Goodreads

Amazon * B&N * Kobo * Audible

Flash Drive

A Dick Thornby Thriller Book 3

Dick Thornby is not Hollywood's idea of a spy. He's a new kind of spy for a new kind of world.

Of course, it's complicated when you're an international spy with a wife, a kid, and a mortgage, but everyone thinks you're really a waste water treatment consultant. And, it's bad when your family finds out about your clandestine life, your wife wants to keep tabs on where you are, and your kid tries to emulate your espionage activities. But, it's downright dangerous for your career, your family, your colleagues, and your prospects of living until retirement when the powers-that-be at the Subsidiary discover you haven't been keeping the secrets you should have.

Forced to bring his family in tow on an off-the-books mission to investigate a mysterious flash in the middle of the Australian Outback, Dick Thornby has to contend with foreign agents, a sinister Japanese cult, outlandish conspiracy theories, and futuristic weapons from the past to save his family and himself while still completing his bizarre quest for the truth about what happened out woop woop and why so many people with weapons care.

“FLASH DRIVE builds on the universe that Mr. Bingle began with NET IMPACT and continued with WET WORK. This time, everyman spy Dick Thornby and his family are on a mission to… wait, huh? What secret agent in his right mind brings his family along on a dangerous espionage assignment? Find out inside this grand entertainment that sports an intriguing plot, well-written and thrilling action scenes, and a few laughs, too!”--Raymond Benson, author of Hotel Destiny—a Ghost Noir and The Black Stiletto Serial

“Dick Thornby, Donald J. Bingle’s domestic family man and international spy is back! And that’s a good thing if you want a danger-filled and thrilling adventure (and who doesn’t?) mixed with family-love and laced with Bingle’s signature wit. Do what needs to be done and get Flash Drive. A good time will be had by all!” — Steven Paul Leiva, Award-winning author of Blood is Pretty: The First Fixxer Adventure.

"Donald J. Bingle has, without a doubt, a sleek style of writing. Flash Drive is not run-of-the mill, for sure. The new Dick Thornby spy thriller sets a suspenseful, compelling espionage tale against a backdrop of what we often assume to be an imperturbable Australia."--Khaled Talib, Author of Spiral

Here's what Spy Guys and Gals had to say about Net Impact, the first book in the Dick Thornby series: "I love spy novels. I devote my hobby time to them. I write about them on my website. When I find a series that I really enjoy, I am delighted and that word most definitely applies to this series. It has action, great characters, interesting twists, and enough suspense to make you both hold your breath and turn the page (digitally in my case). I like Dick Thornby and I like reading about him and I hope to continue to do so."

Explosions! Action! Spycraft! Car Chases! Thrills! Mysteries! Conspiracies! Globe-Trotting! Exotic Weapons! More Explosions!

Read the entire Dick Thornby Thriller series, including Net Impact and Wet Work. From Donald J. Bingle, the author of other fine thrillers, including Forced Conversion, GREENSWORD, and Frame Shop.

Add to Goodreads

Amazon * B&N * Kobo

Donald J. Bingle is an oft-published author in the thriller, science fiction, fantasy, horror, mystery, steampunk, romance, comedy, and memoir genres, with seven books (including Flash Drive, Wet Work, Net Impact, Forced Conversion, Frame Shop, The Love-Haight Case Files (with Jean Rabe), and GREENSWORD) and more than 60 shorter stories, primarily in DAW themed anthologies and tie-in anthologies. Many of Don's stories are electronically available, individually or in his Writer on Demand TM collections by genre, including "Tales of Gamers and Gaming," "Tales of Humorous Horror," "Tales Out of Time", "Grim, Fair e-Tales," "Tales of an Altered Past Powered by Romance, Horror, and Steam, "Not-So-Heroic Fantasy," and "Shadow Realities." He is a member of the International Thriller Writers, Horror Writers of America, International Association of Media Tie-In Writers, and Origins Game Fair Library. He was also the world's top-ranked player of classic roleplaying games for about fifteen years.

Website * Facebook * Twitter * Bookbub * Amazon * Goodreads

Follow the tour HERE for special content and a giveaway!

$25 Amazon 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Smash, Smash, Smash: The True Story of Kai the Hitchhiker

 

Smash, Smash, Smash:

The True Story of Kai the Hitchhiker

by Philip Fairbanks

August 7 - September 1, 2023 Virtual Book Tour

Synopsis:

"That woman was in danger, so I ran up behind him with a hatchet... Smash, smash, SUH-MASH!!!"

Millions of people heard these words and shared the viral video with their friends. This mysterious surfing hitchhiker then vanished as quickly as he appeared, only to reappear on many late night talk shows and fan videos. But 3 months later, he was arrested and charged with killing a prominent New Jersey lawyer... in self defense against a sex assault.

Who is this mysterious hitchhiker? What was with that lawyer who drugged and assaulted him? Why would the investigators destroy evidence, tamper with witnesses, and shut the public out of the trial?

For almost a decade, the public was kept in the dark: until investigative journalist Philip Fairbanks searched for the truth in mountains of government records, witness statements, and hard evidence. At long last, he found the answers to these burning, aching questions...

And they will surprise you.

Praise for Smash, Smash, Smash: The True Story of Kai the Hitchhiker:

"Phil is not the kind of journalist who files a story and gets on with his life. That passion and integrity shine through in this book, and generally in the way Phil makes you care about the people he’s covering….

When I read this book, as with so many things Phil has written, I feel that I am in good hands, being carefully guided to the truth."
~ Alissa Fleck
(Newsweek, SF Gate, Houston Chronicle)

"In his latest book, Philip Fairbanks wields a wealth of laboriously earned evidence and detail, the product of five years of research, to tell a harrowing and heartbreaking tale nobody (until him) deemed worthy of telling, and some would rather remain untold….

In his characteristically engaging style and with a dexterous balance of compassion, curiosity, and analysis, the author walks the reader through a hellish nightmare; one that Kai was born into and in which he continues to exist."
~ Wendy Painting, PhD
(Author, Aberration in the Heartland of the Real: The Secret Lives of Timothy McVeigh)

Book Details:

Genre: True Crime
Published by: Is It Wet Yet Press
Publication Date: February 2023
Number of Pages: 456
ISBN: 9781959947998 (ISBN10: 1959947990)
Book Links: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | BookShop.org | Goodreads

Read an excerpt:

AUTHOR’S NOTE

It’s been about five years since my first article about Caleb McGillivary was published in The Inquisitr. Not long after that, I conducted a series of telephone interviews. I was taken aback by how implausible the inherent corruption was: evident in multiple conflicts of interest; and an apparent cover-up during the investigation, that was allowed to go practically unchallenged from the prosecutor’s mouth to the media. All that ugliness nakedly on display surely should have attracted a frenzy of media interest.

Over the years, a sickening realization came to mind. As far as reporters covering the case, I seem to be one of the “experts” if not “an authority.” Certainly, one of the few, if not only, journalists who took the time to check Kai’s claims and allegations against the evidence at hand. It might be kind of nice being a leading authority on some benign subject. Rare arthropods, maybe? I could dig being a foremost authority on some obscure Flemish Renaissance-era painter’s oeuvre, for sure. The gravity of the situation can be almost overwhelming, though, when your expertise is on a subject about which a human life hangs in the balance.

So, you can imagine my mixed feelings when a production company known for prestige projects approached me with the idea of using some of my work in a film for one of the “Big 3” streaming companies.

I was flattered, of course. Probably the first in a wave of emotions to come up. The thought that Kai’s words, from calls I’d recorded, might achieve a bit of immortality. Even better, the prospect that the film could make a difference. Something like The Thin Blue Line, one of the most important and influential works in the entirety of the corpus of “True Crime.” Like Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, it is a work that somehow manages to both define and transcend the boundaries of “True Crime.”

After a few rounds of emails, a call was set up. Everyone I had dealt with was pleasant and nice, but I couldn’t shake the feeling I was being purposefully put at ease. For what reasons I couldn’t tell. Hell, I couldn’t even tell if I was just being paranoid because of my close connection to the story. Admittedly compounded by the investment of time, work, and emotional energy I’d put into it for some years. They understood that I might be quite attached to the story (specifically to the “materials” they wished me to license for their use). And of course, the more I thought about it, the more worried I was about the misrepresentation of my work or Kai himself and the case.

And to be honest, attached is not the right word for this case, or for another case I’ve been working on for the past few years. The second involved a decades- long running fraud ring connected to multiple murders. I finally managed to get some interest from journalist Alissa Fleck (Newsweek, SF Gate, Houston Chronicle, Huffington Post, Adweek, and others). Apart from her, I’d struggled to get any other reporters or outlets to even take a look. That or being ghosted after some initial interest is shown. The situation is similar to the work of Justine Barron, another noteworthy journalist who pursues cases wherever they lead. Whether or not the major papers are interested in doing due diligence themselves. For whatever reason, there are incredibly important stories that are suppressed, sometimes for years. Just look at how Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein, Peter Nygard, and others managed to float along all those years.

With Kai’s case and that of the Texas-based Ponzi ring, I’ve spent years researching and tracking down the truth. In the hopes of holding it to the light. I also got to know the living, breathing humans that exist at the other end of the story. Many of my biggest stories are the smallest ones. For me, success is exposing some injustice or imbalance. Some wrong to be righted. For instance, the honor student nearly expelled over doctor-recommended CBD oil being mistaken for THC oil by an ignorant school administration. The case of a young man selling the herbal plant medicine kratom in Tennessee. A story I covered that would be a turning point in the war for kratom legality in the state. Shortly after the case, the attorney general expressed a formal opinion that the plant was not included in a blanket synthetic drug ban. The couple arrested with kratom in their car. Initially charged with distributing heroin. Their life and small business thrown into disarray as a result. These are stories no one else was telling, or at least not in totality.

In each of those above cases, an eventual positive outcome would be achieved. Even if the only thing I was able to do was to provide some hope to victims of outrageous fortune. To make sure their stories were heard. The result was something I could—and do— take seriously. Something I take pride in. It’s rewarding to have achieved success (by Emerson’s standards anyway) by having made someone breathe a little easier, having made their life a little less hard for the day.

In Kai’s case, the stakes are too high. Not to mention the evidence of corruption is so ample and readily available to just leave it be.

So yes, I suppose that at the very least you could say I was a little “attached” to the story. In my first email back to the production company, I pointed out that I was the sole, or nearly only, source of several salient points of information about the case. That these claims were backed up by evidence released in discovery: crime scene photos, investigative notes, and interviews. They too had read the entirety of the available transcripts, they told me. However, they warned me, that they wouldn’t be “focusing” on the trial or the investigation.

That would be a totally different documentary, they said. My dream of an Errol Morris-style hit film freeing an innocent man were, if not dashed at this point, precariously hanging by a thread like a loose tooth spinning, barely affixed to the gum. So here it was. My Catch-22. My very own Faustian bargain. And though it has been quite a while since I’ve read Goethe, I almost certainly recall there being no section on freeing one’s soul from the grips of Mephistopheles come in the guise of a documentary materials release form. I knew I had no place to tell them what should or should not be in the documentary. That would be, not only in bad taste but a violation of journalistic ethics on my part. That said, I made it clear I would gladly sign over usage rights if they could make sure to include at least a handful of those major facts that point to the cover-up and, dare I say it, yes, a conspiracy that had taken place. It was then made plain and simple to me. The best possible way to get that information, Kai’s side of the story, on the books for them would be to let him speak. Kai had declined involvement with the documentary before they spoke to me, however, and they only used people “directly related” to stories in their documentaries which counted me out.

As it turns out, my fears of potentially making a deal with the devil were unfounded. A producer at the company informed me just as they were going into post-production that they were using other material “to lay out Kai’s defense.” Despite my precautions and concerns, I would be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed after hoping that a tangential connection to a major documentary and my name in the credits might help me get this story the attention it deserves.

No worries, though. The interviews that were licensed for and would have appeared in the documentary were transcribed and will be available online. Links to the recordings on YouTube will be there as well as links to all relevant files, court documents, crime scene photos, and more both in cloud storage and at bit.ly/kaidocs and philfairbanks.com.

Kai is at the center of the book, but at the same time the book is about how his case is just one of many examples. That’s the scary part. If his case was some crazy exception that’d be awful still; but what’s so chilling is we know about this case only because he was mistaken for someone who wasn’t well known. Galfy wanted a vagrant, somebody who could be used and discarded, someone with no ties; he chose wrong but even so, they were able to do this.

Now imagine if you don’t have worldwide press coverage of your story.

TWO FATEFUL RIDES

It was a chilly but humid day in Fresno, February 1st, 2013.1 Between the time the frigid, overcast skies broke with sunlight until the day would turn to cold, foggy night several lives would be forever changed. It was the day that Jett Simmons McBride picked up a young “home free” hitchhiker. It was the day that Rayshawn Neely would be nearly crippled. And it was the day that Caleb McGillivary, better known as “Kai the Hatchet-Wielding Hitchhiker” would become a folk hero to millions across the world. Kai earned his “hatchet-wielding hitchhiker” moniker during that first ride that brought him to the attention of the internet at large. Kai had been picked up by Jett Simmons McBride, a 6-foot-4, nearly 300-pound, 54-yearold man who boasted to Kai about raping a 14-year-old girl in the Virgin Islands just before the chaos he would unleash on that fateful Fresno day. McBride also loudly bragged that he was, in fact, Jesus Christ reincarnated.

* Kai’s legal name is Caleb McGillivary, but some court documents and newspaper stories have his name improperly listed as “McGillvary.”

As a result, he reasoned, he could do anything he wanted. As if to prove his point, he took a sharp turn towards some Pacific Gas & Electric employees doing roadwork outside.

“He’s like, well I’ve come to realize I’m Jesus Christ and I can get away with anything I want to. Watch this, and there’s a whole crew of construction people in front of me and most of them jumped aside and one pinned underneath,” Kai explained in the interview that initially made him a star. “He said ‘I am God. I am Jesus. I was sent here to take all the [racial slurs] to heaven,’” Nick Starkey, one of the PG&E workers on the scene claimed. Neely said he never heard the racial slurs, but something about being the victim of attempted vehicular homicide tends to do a number on one’s memory and focus.

McBride pinned Rayshawn Neely against a vehicle at which point, Kai jumped out to help. McBride also attacked a woman on the scene. Kai shared in his memorable interview how he feared McBride might seriously harm her if he didn’t spring into action. The woman on the scene confirmed that Kai had indeed saved her. As Kai put it, without his fortunate appearance at the scene there would have been “hella lot more bodies.” With Rayshawn dangerously pinned by McBride’s vehicle, Tanya Baker, who was at the scene attempted to help him. At this point, McBride turned on her as well.8

“Like a guy that big can snap a woman’s neck like a pencil stick,” Kai explained why he sprung into action. “So I fucking ran up behind him with a hatchet—smash, smash, suh-mash!”

The interview with Jessob Reisbeck made an instant star out of Kai. Something about the heroic encounter, Kai’s character, and his message of redemption resonated within the public consciousness. “Before I say anything else, I want to say no matter what you’ve done, you deserve respect, even if you make mistakes. You’re lovable and it doesn’t matter your looks, skills, or age, or size or anything. You’re worthwhile... no one can take that away from you.”

February 7, 2013, Jessob Reisbeck caught back up with who he described as a “world-class hero.” Reisbeck, who continues to keep in touch with Kai “found him after 5 or 6 days” to conduct a follow-up interview. Kai’s cheeky humor shined through with portions sounding like an Abbott and Costello bit: “What have you been up to since?” “About 6 foot,” Kai replied. He also admitted he didn’t like the idea of a “stereotypical normal life.” That meant, in part, no 9 to 5 job or smartphone to weigh him down. “Are you aware what you’ve become?” Reisbeck asked. “I’ve seen it.” As for his thoughts on the outpouring of support from all over the country even worldwide, Kai’s response was simply: “Shock and awe.” Asked if he was happy about the exciting new world he’d accidentally entered, his reply was simply, “I’d prefer if I was American, but yeah.”

Jessob asked if there was anything else Kai would like to say to “all of your fans right now, because you do have them around the world.” Kai spurned the hero worship. Instead, he offered another simple, heartfelt message to the many who idolized him since the selfless act. “I do not own you, I do not have you, please do not be obsessed. Thank you, love, respect, I value you.” Within 48 hours of the KMPH interview being released and subsequently going viral, Kai was a household name earning accolades and mentions in media worldwide. Philadelphia magazine called Kai “the hero millennials need” in a February 8th article from 2013.

In the next few days, his star would continue to rise as he was featured in Autotune the News. Kai also released a cover of the song “Wagon Wheel.” An IndieGogo page was also set up to get him a new surfboard. The Philly magazine piece marks Kai as emblematic of the millennial generation, especially following the economic upheaval of the 2008 housing bubble which resulted in severe inflation, higher cost of living, and a recession we still haven’t truly escaped.

Just under three weeks out, Kai had his first day in court, perhaps foreshadowing what was to come in just about three months. He had just appeared on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” and would now be stealing the show during the preliminary hearing against Jett McBride. Despite some of the urban myths surrounding this story, Kai did not kill McBride. McBride had told his wife that Kai was the “coolest son-of-a-bitch” he had ever met. Even expressing a desire to “adopt” the home free hitchhiker. And spurious claims that Kai may have made up the story of underage rape in the Virgin Islands were refuted by McBride himself admitting the act to police on the scene. Kai’s court appearance inspired laughter and spawned headlines further cementing his place as a beloved character to so many. But by the time Jett Simmons McBride was tried in California, Kai was unable to appear. The lack of one of the primary witnesses in attendance likely altered the disposition of the case according to Scott Baly, McBride’s defense attorney. By January 2014, McBride was found guilty on some, but not all charges. The most serious charges, that of attempted murder, would not go through and even the charges he was found guilty of only resulted in psychiatric confinement for a maximum of 9 years. He was sent up to the famous Atascadero State Hospital rather than prison. Atascadero had been home for a time to the likes of serial killers like Tex Watson, Ed Kemper, and Roy Norris among others.

“I won’t say whether it hurt or helped, it affected everything,” Baly told the press. Admitting that he had hoped for acquittal on all charges. “I think there’s mixed emotions for all of us. I mean certainly, I think the moment not guilty on count one was read there was relief; it was followed shortly by a guilty reading on count two and count three so there’s a different feeling on those charges.”

What we can tell for certain, however, is that if not stopped McBride would have almost certainly wreaked far more havoc. According to the case text of the McBride court proceedings, Jett Simmons McBride was laboring under the delusion that he had uncovered a secret terrorist plot that would target the Super Bowl.

At this point, Jett McBride packed his bags to head down to New Orleans for the Super Bowl where he was convinced a bombing would occur. McBride destroyed his phone and tossed the broken remnants of it in a parking lot and some bushes to evade being tracked by the CIA, FBI, and Department of Defense who he was convinced were following his every step.

Before reaching his destination, McBride started noticing that he was being passed by white utility trucks. These were no ordinary trucks, McBride was convinced. They were, to his mind, evidence of the Illuminati following him, on his trail. Intent on killing him. Quite disturbed mentally at this point, McBride stopped in Bakersfield staying the night at the illustrious Vagabond Inn, a motel where he watched television and had some Scotch to wind down. The next day he got back on the road, then picked up a soon-to-be-famous hitchhiker he saw near the on-ramp to northbound State Route 99 not far from the Vagabond.

The hitchhiker introduced himself as Kai and asked McBride if he was heading as far as Fresno. McBride told him that he would be heading through the area on his way to Tacoma. While staying in Bakersfield, he had received messages from his nephew and Donna, his wife, who he was supposed to pick up at the airport. This unexpected intrusion from reality slightly changed his unhinged “attempt at heroism” at the Super Bowl in New Orleans.

It was once they made it into Fresno’s Tower District that Kai offered to pick up some cannabis. Jett McBride handed him $40 after which Kai disappeared into a convenience store, shortly after emerging with a bag of weed and some rolling papers. Kai rolled the joint as McBride, who was unfamiliar with Fresno, began to drive. McBride describes having a “deep” conversation with Kai and eventually extended his hand to the young hitchhiker, leaning over to hug him. “Depressed and distraught” is how he’s described in the court transcript.

The grown man also began crying over his wife. From this point on, it becomes obvious that the story has been doctored somewhat to make McBride look better. Even though it was admitted that McBride began believing that white utility trucks were agents of the Illuminati, it was McGillivary who supposedly said the electrical workers were planting bombs. Of course, it’s quite likely that this was a narrative cooked up by McBride’s attorney, Scott Baly. Considering Kai wouldn’t be able to defend himself or offer his eye-witness testimony, it was possible to try and pin more blame on him to alleviate the well-earned scorn directed at the alleged rapist with his racist slurs and dangerously unhinged conspiracy theories. Despite the reported flurry of racial slurs aimed toward Neely and other minorities at the scene, McBride’s defense claimed that he was “trying to heal Neely.” The defense claims, contrary to what witnesses on the scene have claimed, that McBride “at no time” made any racial statements or used “racial epithets.”

Neely’s reported response to McBride attempting to “heal” the serious and potentially life-threatening injury he was responsible for was something to the tune of, “Get this fucker off of me.” This, once again, ripped straight from McBride’s trial transcript.

The big bear of a man described the flurry of activity, the desperate attempt to put his rampage to a halt. He “thought he was dying” as he felt a knee on his back, someone grabbing his neck, someone pushing him to the ground, a boot in his face. All he claims to recall is saying, “Get off of me.” Around this time, for whatever reason, McBride began to disrobe. He was now convinced he was not only “filled with the Holy Spirit” and an incarnation of Jesus Christ. He was also playing the role of “witness to the end times” (as per Revelations, the two witnesses who would be killed, stripped, and left in the streets for three and a half days).

If the people attacking him, or rather, attempting to slow or stop his assault, in the real world, were to kill him then “they were going to have to drag his body through the street, naked.” Now McBride has decided he’s not just a witness to the end times, Jesus, and filled with the Holy Spirit. He’s also the prophet Enoch. A direct ancestor of Jesus Christ.

McBride, once he had conferred with defense to set the stories straight for the trial, would have little positive to say about Kai. This despite the fact he had earlier referred to him as the “coolest son-of-a-bitch” he had ever met. He had gone from telling his wife Donna that he wanted to adopt Kai to changing his story to Kai being the one jerking the wheel so the vehicle would crush Neely after Donna reported to him how Kai had explained McBride’s stated aim was to “clean all the n****rs out.”

McBride would eventually admit that it was not Kai who had twisted the wheel to pin Neely but did deny that his attack had anything to do with his race. Neely was, McBride claimed, Illuminati. The disorganized thinking of a schizophrenic or person in the throes of a psychotic break is hard to follow.

Perhaps the racial element and the delusion regarding white utility vehicles being secret Illuminati spies were conflated in McBride’s muddled head. Chicago’s ABC7 Action News spoke with some of the victims of McBride’s rampage. Most expressed a hope to fully recover from their injuries and put the whole nightmare behind them, though at least one expressed concern, hoping that McBride wouldn’t find himself released without consequences for his brutal actions.

One popular misconception that has entered Kai the Hitchhiker lore is that Kai killed the deranged, attempted murderer rather than subduing him with the flat end of his hatchet. It probably didn’t help that during the Jimmy Kimmel appearance, the host jokingly thanked Kai for not killing him. Stephen Colbert, currently the host of The Tonight Show, was starring in The Colbert Report on Comedy Central at the time. On the show, Colbert covers the Kai the Hitchhiker story, joking that he has “highway prejudice of my own: against axe-wielding hitchhikers.”

The story played into an already existing urban myth regarding the mythical ax or hatchet or knife-wielding serial killer hitchhiker. The Union County prosecutor and associate of the alleged rapist Joseph Galfy promoted severely damaging disinformation. That, perhaps, Kai was some nefarious serial killer utilizing the highways as his hunting ground. That same prosecutor, by the way, incidentally or coincidentally stepped down, after 11 years, the same day Kai was arrested. Perfect timing if you’d rather not have your recusal on the record.

***

Excerpt from Smash, Smash, Smash: The True Story of Kai the Hitchhiker by Philip Fairbanks. Copyright 2023 by Philip Fairbanks. Reproduced with permission from Philip Fairbanks. All rights reserved.

 

 

Author Bio:

Philip Fairbanks has been a published writer for over 20 years. Most of his writing has been in the field of entertainment reporting and investigative journalism as well as certain academic subjects. He has appeared multiple times in the CUNY graduate paper The Advocate (who published an article by Fairbanks last June), SUNY art journal Afterimage, Ghettoblaster features, interviews and reviews, UK newspaper The Morning Star, UK lit journal White Chimney, Impose, Delusions of Adequacy, and many more print and online publications have published him.

His first book covered issues such as the Epstein scandal, the Finders cult, online grooming and exploitation of children, and the UK grooming epidemic. He felt it was important to write a book on institutional pedophilia that dispels some of the wild disinfo related to Qanon and Pizzagate. Philip is also a voice actor and narrated the audiobook for the first book and is in the process of recording the audiobook for Smash, Smash, Smash.

Catch Up With Philip Fairbanks:
TrueStoryofKai.com
Goodreads
BookBub - @kafkaguy
Twitter - @kafkaguy
Facebook - @truestoryofkai

 

 

Tour Participants:

Visit these other great hosts on this tour for more great reviews, interviews, guest posts, and opportunities to WIN in the giveaway!

 

 

Join In:

This is a giveaway hosted by Partners in Crime Tours for Philip Fairbanks. See the widget for entry terms and conditions. Void where prohibited.

 

 

Get More Great Reads at Partners In Crime Tours

 

The Potrero Complex by Amy L Bernstein & Giveaway

 

The Potrero Complex

by Amy L Bernstein

August 1-31, 2022 Virtual Book Tour

Synopsis:

Journalist Rags Goldner is battle-scarred and heartbroken after covering a devastating pandemic that rages in Baltimore for five years. She leaves the city with her partner in search of a simpler life in small-town Maryland—only to discover nothing in Canary is simple. A teenager is missing, and it falls to Rags to fight the forces of apathy, paranoia, and creeping fascism to learn the shocking truth about Effie Rutter’s fate—and the fate of thousands like her.

Praise for The Potrero Complex:

“Anyone immersed in the experience and possible outcomes of social change after this pandemic will find The Potrero Complex frightening and hard to put down, presenting thought-provoking insights on the progress and erosion of freedom in the name of safety and social preservation.”

D. Donovan, Sr. Reviewer, Midwest Book Review

“Bernstein sets us in a post-pandemic time just the barest bit beyond our own, on the way to a dystopia that feels too frightening and too familiar. A thoughtful, complex, well-executed novel—not a who-done-it? but a much scarier what-in-the-hell-is-happening?”

Robert Kanigel, author of Hearing Homer’s Songand The Man Who Knew Infinity

“An intelligently conceived tale of an unthinkable yet credible future. A novel of dark deeds in dark times.”

Karen S. Bennett, author of Beautiful Horseflesh

“A complicated tale of post-pandemic times in the not-so-distant future, where share cars, data phones, and respies figure into a plot that is scarily believable.”

Avery Caswell, author of Salvation

“Richly textured, with many evocative threads [that] explore the culture of a post-pandemic small town—a town that camouflages its disturbing secrets. A cautionary tale.”

Kathy Mangan, Professor Emeritus, McDaniel College, author of Taproot

“A scarily prescient novel that deftly explores the fraught connections between individuality, society, public policy, and technology.”

Courtney Harler, Harler Literary LLC

“An emotional, haunting tale leaves you with more questions than answers, and that’s a good thing. A memorable and timely reminder that there are no easy solutions when fear and conspiracy feed like hungry beasts and the innocent exist simply for the taking.”

PJ McIlvaine, screenwriter, author of My Horrible Year

Book Details:

Genre: Mystery, Thriller
Published by: Regal House Publishing
Publication Date: August 2nd 2022
Number of Pages: 270
ISBN: 1646032500 (ISBN13: 9781646032501)
Book Links: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads | Regal House Publishing

Read an excerpt:

MISSING: A teenaged girl with lanky, blonde hair and a sunburst tattoo on her cheek.

The holographic posters, brighter than day itself, lit up the air on every block of Main Street. They were the first thing Rags Goldner noticed as she and her partner, Flint Sten, arrived in Canary.

The girl’s name was Effie and she was sixteen.

Effie’s pixelated image beamed down at Rags like a celebrity unaware that her fifteen minutes of fame were up.

Rags refused to give a damn about the missing girl who, after all, she didn’t know. Nor did she know much about the town, Canary, where the driverless ShareCar she and Flint had leased for their move had brought them. But missing kids make news, and as Canary’s newly imported one-and-only newspaper editor, Rags knew she’d be expected to do something about it. Which meant she wouldn’t control the news hole on day one. Which meant all kinds of people would come at her to do one thing or another.

Rags hadn’t been in town five minutes and already she could tell things were going to get complicated—and complicated was the very thing she and Flint were trying to get away from. Damn all the politicians and peacekeepers and their gatekeeping bullshit, she thought.

As the car made a final turn toward its programmed destination, Rags’s twitch flared up: the muscles in her upper left cheek and the outer corner of her left eye performed an uncontrolled little dance. “Ah, crap,” she said. “Turning Main Street into Times Square won’t help them find the girl. What a waste. And all that light pollution.” She stretched her face, willing the twitch to stop.

Flint held up his dataphone and aimed it at one of the digital posters as they cruised by. The static image of Effie sprang into augmented-reality motion: she turned her head, blinked, and laughed.

“Stop doing that, Flint,” Rags said. “Just don’t.” No way that girl, out there somewhere, is smiling.

“Don’t get spun up so fast.” Flint looked over at her for the first time in hours. Their connection was like a faulty wire, fritzing on and off. “Give yourself some room to ramp up,” he said, putting his hand on top of her head in a familiar gesture: simmer down. It helped. The twitching nearly stopped. “We haven’t even come to a full stop yet. Pace yourself.”

“Well, look,” Rags said. “They’ve plastered her face everywhere. Probably been like that for weeks.”

“You think the story about this girl has gone cold, right?” Flint said. “What do you call that?”

“Beat up. I’m guessing the story’s beat up. The first thing I’m going to hear is that they want me to flog it some more. Remind me, why are we doing this?”

“Let’s not,” Flint said, looking back down at his screen. “Anyway, it was your idea.”

As the ShareCar rolled noiselessly down Main Street, Rags saw just one person hanging around the deserted downtown: a woman standing on a corner who appeared to be waiting. For what? Rags wondered. As they slowly passed by, Rags caught a dead look in the woman’s eyes. A block further on, Rags watched a man and a woman, both in shabby coats, as they appeared to argue, their faces contorted with anger. The man handed the woman a bicycle pump. She handed him in return a loaf of bread. What kind of town is this?

The ShareCar parked curbside at 326 Main Street. For well over a century, the little brick building, sandwiched between other little brick buildings, had housed the Canary Courant. A chatty little newspaper, the Courant, as Rags knew from her research, printed anything and everything within the bounds of what people once called ‘common decency’ about the town of Canary, a tiny hamlet in the northwestern corner of Maryland, not far from the Pennsylvania border. The kind of town that flew under the radar for anyone who did not live there.

The fact that the Canary Courant was still a going concern in 2030 was astounding, even mysterious, and a key reason that Rags was here. Though perhaps not the only reason. The paper’s survival was even more of a puzzle when one considered that the town itself, which had been shriveling for decades, was now skeletal. The pandemic, which everybody called The Big One, had raged for nearly five years. It hollowed out an already hollowed out place, killing off over two-thirds of the elderly population living out their days in Canary. Those folks never knew what hit them—their dreams of slipping into gracious idleness on their front-porch rockers, eating breakfast on the cheap at the town diner, destroyed in an agony of fever and blood.

On Canary’s rural outskirts, on their way into town, Rags had seen the crematorium, a hulking cinderblock rectangle erected for one single purpose: to incinerate the infected dead into piles of decontaminated black ash. She was sure Flint missed it— though it was very hard to miss, rising up from a flat expanse of undeveloped land—just as he’d missed seeing Effie until she pointed it out. Like I’m his goddamn tour guide.

Now, nearly two years after The Big One had been officially declared over, Rags suspected that Canary’s survivors were like a mouth full of missing teeth—families broken by a plague that took not merely the elderly but also children and their parents with a seemingly vicious and terrifyingly random determination. With an emphasis on random. Survivors everywhere were known as “Luckies,” though Rags only ever used that term in its most ironic sense.

And yet, even in a near ghost town like Canary, in a still-brittle economy, in a world where print media was a rare novelty, the ink-on-paper edition of the Canary Courant lived on, as quirky and creaky as Miss Havisham in the attic, each folded issue tossed at sunrise every Wednesday and every other Sunday into doorways and onto walkways by a young father and son living on gig income.

Rags deliberately suppressed her own journalistic instincts when it came to figuring out how this newspaper managed to keep going years past its natural expiration date. Turning a blind eye to its improbable existence was both expedient and convenient for her. She knew that income from print ads—about as old-fashioned as you could get—was the sole reason the paper was able to keep going. It surely wasn’t due to subscription revenue. But she didn’t know why anyone would buy print ads in a tiny newspaper serving a dying community in a digital world. There’d be time, she figured, to get to the bottom of that.

The main thing was that this improbable job as the Canary Courant’s editor came her way at a time when she and Flint were looking for an escape hatch that would take them away from the exhausting hysteria and suffocating autocracy that made post-pandemic, big-city living unbearable in countless ways. They came to Canary in search of a simpler life—though Rags, if pressed, could not readily have defined what that would look like. Freedom from fear? Freedom to forget? She kept these notions to herself because she did not think Flint would admit to any of it—let alone acknowledge the possibility.

Rags had worried before they arrived that an out-of-the-way place like Canary might have borne an influx of people seeking—or imagining—that this place would prove to be some kind of oasis. But from the little she’d seen so far, there was nothing oasis-like about this town. The garish and intrusive billboards of the missing Effie radiated an anxious thrum, nothing like a small-town welcome.

Rags and Flint left the ShareCar with programmed instructions to continue on and wait for them at the house they were renting a few blocks from Canary’s minuscule town center. The entire move, including Rags’s new job, had been planned remotely, so this was their first time actually in Canary. In the grand scheme of things, given the terrifying and unpredictable upheavals they’d already lived through, moving hundreds of miles away to a new place sight unseen didn’t feel at all risky.

From the outside, the newspaper office mimicked the virtual reality images Rags had already seen online. A plate-glass window with old-fashioned gold lettering rimmed in black spelled out Canary Courant. Since 1910. Rags doubted there was anything very “current” about it; the very name advertised its status as a relic with a pretentious echo of French. Rags wondered who else knew that courant in French had more than one meaning— not just “current” but also “ordinary.” Someone must have had the lettering on the window repainted many times over the years—and who even knew how to do that sort of thing, anymore?—but this was a line item Rags wasn’t going to worry about. She was here on purpose yet still felt faintly ridiculous about the whole thing.

All this ye-oldy feel-good yester-year crap, she thought. Some kind of amusement park for blinkered folks. A post-apocalyptic Disneyworld? Or maybe Westworld—a place where you could trick yourself into relaxing, just for a moment.

Yet here she was, along with her IT-guru partner Flint, a software developer steeped in AI arcana, who was definitely not the ye-oldy type. Fitting in, for both of them, was beside the point. Rags figured they’d both settle for some kind of new equilibrium. She waved her dataphone in front of the digi-lock and the heavy front door swung open. The newspaper office was a step up from the threshold because, Rags learned later, the floor had been reinforced a century ago to support the heavy metal printing presses that used to take up a third of the space with their loud, clackety racket.

As Rags entered the square-shaped newsroom, the old floor creaking, a woman likely more than twice Rags’s age—a surprise in and of itself, in this day and age—stood up quickly from a battered wooden desk, her chair scraping against the floor. Rags knew only her first name, Merry. She was tall with broad shoulders, like a swimmer, dressed in loose-fitting wrinkled clothes, her hair silver-gray and so long it touched her buttocks.

“You’re here,” Merry said with a slightly accusatory edge that did not escape Rag’s notice, as though she’d been doing something she shouldn’t.

“Yup,” Rags said as she scanned the room. She made a quick mental list of all the things she intended to change. Rags hated clutter the way healthy people hate cancer: it was offensive, invasive, and should be eliminated quickly and surgically. The heavy furniture would have to go, and the old-fashioned filing cabinets, and the shelf of tacky journalism awards—the fake-gold winged angels, the stupid quill pens mounted on blocks of glass. Rags guessed that most if not all of the people who’d won those awards were long dead, one way or another. She’d call someone as soon as possible to haul all this crap away. The place looked like a mausoleum, for chrissakes. And that told her all she needed to know about Merry, who radiated the territorial energy of a fox guarding its cubs.

“I’ve got tomorrow’s front page made up on screen,” Merry said, standing rigidly by her desk. “I suppose you want to see it.” Rags saw Flint make a tiny, familiar gesture: flicking on his ear discs (he’d insisted on upgrading from old-school earbuds), so he could drown out the voices around him and listen to the soundtrack of his choice. With this personal sound cushion enveloping him, Flint glided around the room like a restless ghost, ignoring the two women, fingering every piece of tech there was, and there wasn’t much. Rags turned her attention to Merry—watching her watching Flint, to see how much this invasion of Merry’s claimed space unsettled her. Rags didn’t bother to introduce them, as Flint wasn’t likely to visit the newsroom again.

“Is it all about the missing girl?” Rags asked.

“Is there another big story in town I’ve missed?” Merry asked, her blue-gray eyes staring icily at Rags. “Because if so, be my guest. You’ve got two whole hours until we send the file to the printers.” Merry stepped away from her desk, as if inviting Rags to step in. Rags read the gesture as it was intended: What the fuck do you know?

Well, this wasn’t going to be pretty. In that moment, Rags had to admit to herself that while she thought she longed to live in a place where she could pursue small stories of no consequence, instead of big ones that traded in life and death, she was never going to check her personality at the door. She wouldn’t look for trouble, but she wouldn’t back away from a fight, either, especially if she knew going into it that she had the upper hand. She was editor-in-chief, after all, not Merry—a holdover from a previous regime with an ill-defined job, as far as Rags knew.

Rags sat down at a battered desk nearly identical to Merry’s and began opening drawers, which contained random bits of long-obsolete office junk: Post-It notes, ballpoint pens, paperclips, a box of peppermint Tic-Tacs. Rags popped a Tic-Tac in her mouth and bit down hard; it was stale and tasteless.

“That’s Freddy’s desk,” Merry said. “You mean it was,” Rags said.

“For a long time, yeah. He was a damn good copy editor.

Nothing got past Freddy. That’s what everybody said.”

“Except The Big One, I’m guessing,” Rags said, without an ounce of sympathy. “Snuck right up on him.”

“Yeah, it did,” Merry said flatly, turning back to her screen.

“So what’s your plan, Polly?”

“Don’t call me Polly. Call me Rags.”

“I was told the new editor-in-chief is named Polly,” Merry said, as if trying to catch Rags in a lie. “I wasn’t told anything about somebody named Rags.”

“Yet here I am,” Rags said, rising from Freddy’s chair. She stood behind Merry and looked at the screen. “How many stories on this girl, Effie, have you run this month, Merry?”

“We try to post something every week.” “Why?” Rags asked.

“Why? Because we’re trying to flush out new leads, Pol—

Rags.”

“Are there any?” Rags asked, scrolling around the digital home page of the Courant. Merry hovered over her, as though she feared Rags would break something.

“Not in over a week,” Merry said.

“So it’s a beat-up story but you keep milking it for, what, sympathy?”

“No!” Merry said, turning red. “You don’t have any children, do you? Because if you did, you’d—”

“Bury it,” Rags said.

“You want me to bury the lead story? And replace it with what?” Merry’s cheeks flushed. She bit her lower lip. Rags noted how little it would take to get her really and truly riled up.

By this point, Flint had found an ancient PC from 2010 sitting on a dusty windowsill and he was taking it apart, down to the motherboard and its old components. Rags knew he was going to wait her out, and this would keep him happily occupied until she was good and ready to leave. He was patient in this type of situation, which Rags appreciated; his tolerance of her own need to press on, push hard, was essential to balancing them out. Maybe here, finally, she’d find a way to press less, though the situation was not promising in that respect.

Rags touched Merry’s screen to scroll through the pages of the main news well. It was only a couple of pages long before you hit sports, the crossword (unkillable), and then those unaccountably robust print ads listing everything from flying lessons to bizarre personals. She told Merry to make the lead a story she’d spotted about a leaking septic tank and to bury the Effie story right before the sports section. The need for the switch was obvious. The Effie story had had its day, and anything that remotely threatened public health, like a septic tank problem, belonged well above the fold. It was a thin fold, in any case, despite the ads.

“And when the next kid goes missing, you want us to bury

that too?” Merry asked.

“What do you mean, the next kid?” Rags asked. “It’s going to happen,” Merry said, biting her lip. “You don’t know that.”

“You don’t know anything,” Merry said.

“Then tell me, Merry. Tell me what I don’t know.”

Rags could see Merry’s chest rising and falling, as if she was struggling to hold something in. But Merry said nothing.

“Switch the stories,” Rags said. There was no way she’d back down and let Merry have her way. And besides, if there was nothing new to report on the Effie case, then there really wasn’t a compelling reason to give the story the banner headline for the week. Rags had no qualms about her decision. “Flint, let’s go find our new home.”

Flint had his head deep inside the guts of the old PC he’d found. She called to him again. He straightened up, dusted off his hands, and followed Rags out without a word to Merry, leaving the deconstructed computer in bits and pieces on the desk.

***

Excerpt from The Potrero Complex by Amy L Bernstein. Copyright 2022 by Amy L Bernstein. Reproduced with permission from Amy L Bernstein. All rights reserved.

 

 

Author Bio:

Amy L. Bernstein writes stories that let readers feel while making them think. Her novels include The Potrero Complex, The Nighthawkers, Dreams of Song Times, and Fran, The Second Time Around. Amy is an award-winning journalist, speechwriter, playwright, and certified nonfiction book coach. When not glued to a screen, she loves listening to jazz and classical music, drinking wine with friends, and exploring Baltimore’s glorious neighborhoods, which inspire her fiction.

Catch Up With Amy L Bernstein:
AmyWrites.live
Goodreads
BookBub - @Amy5705
Instagram - @amylbernstein
Twitter - @amylbernstein
Facebook - @AmyLBernsteinAuthor
TikTok - @amylbernsteinauthor

 

 

Tour Participants:

Visit these other great hosts on this tour for more great reviews, interviews, guest posts, and giveaways!

 

 

GIVEAWAY:

This is a giveaway hosted by Partners in Crime Tours for Amy L. Bernstein. See the widget for entry terms and conditions. Void where prohibited.

 

 

Get More Great Reads at Partners In Crime Tours