“Peculiar” is what the coroner called Albert Ruppert Manigrove III’s death on a dark highway just outside Fort Knox, guardian of America’s gold and home to secret U.S. military operations. It's the early 1950s, and the Cold War has turned hot. Super powers Russia and the U.S. are pitted against each other in a struggle for control of the Korean Peninsula. While this bloody encounter rages on, a more fundamental contest is being played out in secret laboratories and testing sites around the globe. Its signature is the monstrous mushroom cloud—the Hydrogen Bomb, mankind’s deadliest weapon. Was Captain Manigrove’s death tied to the gold or was he a casualty of this secret war?
As an award-winning investigative journalist, editor and political columnist, Alan Eysen wrote for many years about real-world financial and political corruption. At Newsday, he served as a prominent member of the investigative team that won the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for exposing misconduct involving Long Island public officials. After more than thirty years in journalism, he became a political consultant and experienced the other side of the story. Today, Eysen resides in the lowcountry of South Carolina, where he continues to write and be inspired by the colorful characters and harrowing situations he experienced firsthand as a reporter. He can often be found crafting his strong fictional characters with the help of an equally strong dry gin martini.
The following passage is from my novel, Secrets…Spies, Lies and Criminal Ties, Chapter 11, Page 79. The unexpected shapes our lives.
Book Excerpt
Secrets: Spies, Lies and Criminal Ties
As the pain drained into the mattress, Joey looked up at what had at first appeared as a smooth white ceiling. Then, like in a reversed image, he noticed that the white was divided by thin, long spider leg cracks that crawled out from corners into the white abyss. Nothing is as it seems as first. His life had been like that. He had been shaped for peace, yet he became a warrior. It was the Monopoly fight that changed him, that taught him his parents’ way only led to more trouble.
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