When the police investigation into the gruesome murder of a gentle retired history professor stalls, two friends of the dead man plead with PI Martin Preuss to find out what happened. The twisting trail leads him across the entire metropolitan Detroit region, from a peace fellowship center, a Buddhist temple, and a sprawling homeless encampment into a treacherous world of long-buried family secrets where the anguished relations between parents and children meet the gathering storm of domestic terrorism. Will all his wits and skills be enough to navigate through the hate to find the killer?
This seventh Martin Preuss mystery is a powerful, gripping novel of guilt and redemption.
An award-winning fiction writer and poet, I'm the author of seven Martin Preuss mysteries: In the House of Night (2020), Cold Dark Lies (2019), An Uncertain Accomplice (2018), The Forgotten Child (2017), Guilt in Hiding (2016), The Baker’s Men (2014), and Crimes of Love (2011).
I'm also a contributor to a new book of dystopian novellas, Postcards from the Future: A Triptych on Humanity's End (2019). I am the author of The House of Grins (1992), a novel; and two books of poetry, In Praise of Old Photographs (2005) and New Year’s Tangerine (2007). My poetry and short fiction have appeared in numerous print and e-journals. Follow my blog at www.donaldlevin.wordpress.com and my website at www.donaldlevin.com.
Preuss's investigation into Charles Bright's murder take him into some of the darkest spaces in modern life. One of those spaces is filled with an organized group of white supremacist domestic terrorists. Once they realize Preuss has his eye on them, they decide to strike back--hard.
Book Excerpt
In the House of Night
Turning off Woodward down the street to his house, he saw the lights from a car following him. Alarm bells went off in his head when the pickup roared past him and cut him off.
He jammed on the brakes.
Before he could throw it into reverse, they burst out of the truck. Three of them, straight from Central Casting—shaved heads, shaggy beards, camo hoodies. Two went right for Preuss, pulling open the driver’s side door and yanking him out. The third man leapt atop the Explorer’s hood and smashed the front windshield with a baseball bat.
The two who pulled Preuss out of the car threw him to the pavement. One aimed a kick at his head but Preuss rolled away from it. The second man in a camo cap pounced on him and lifted him up for the first one—a big, furious, Grizzly Adams-type—to punch him in the stomach hard enough with a ham-sized fist to double Preuss over.
He couldn’t catch his breath. He felt like he was going to suffocate right then and there.
The man behind him straightened him for another blow.
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