Author: | David Reichart | ISBN: | 9781465733184 |
Publisher: | David Reichart | Publication: | November 9, 2011 |
Imprint: | Smashwords Edition | Language: | English |
Author: | David Reichart |
ISBN: | 9781465733184 |
Publisher: | David Reichart |
Publication: | November 9, 2011 |
Imprint: | Smashwords Edition |
Language: | English |
Sally McGinn was sixteen, beautiful, innocent. Maybe she was too innocent to realize that in 1943 Mobile was not the gentile, provincial Southern gem she expected it to be.
The steamy Gulf Coast city was under siege by thousands who had left the backwoods and overworked cotton fields for booming wartime shipyards. Many of the newcomers lived in shantytowns and tent cities. Sewage and garbage problems caused rumors of typhoid; juvenile delinquency and venereal disease were out of control, and out on the streets pretty girls were disappearing.
Mobile’s growing assortment of thieves, thugs, prostitutes and pimps are solid citizens compared to Claude Gagnon, leader of a notorious pack of in-bred swamp dwellers, who comes to town with murder on his mind and supports himself by doing dirty work for a white slavery ring operating out of a waterfront bar.
When the city's overworked and under-manned police force fails to make progress in the missing persons cases, three people with separate motives set out to find the missing girls and bring the white slavers to justice:
private investigator Frank Lundy, a former football hero who’s 4-F and sensitive about it; Alfred Page, an AWOL black soldier targeted for murder by the manic Claude Gagnon; and newspaper reporter Valerie Gilbreath, an ex-debutante and Mardi Gras queen trying to shake her Old Money image and build a career as a serious journalist. One thing they all could agree on: Sally McGinn should never have gone down to the neon district on a school night.
Sally McGinn was sixteen, beautiful, innocent. Maybe she was too innocent to realize that in 1943 Mobile was not the gentile, provincial Southern gem she expected it to be.
The steamy Gulf Coast city was under siege by thousands who had left the backwoods and overworked cotton fields for booming wartime shipyards. Many of the newcomers lived in shantytowns and tent cities. Sewage and garbage problems caused rumors of typhoid; juvenile delinquency and venereal disease were out of control, and out on the streets pretty girls were disappearing.
Mobile’s growing assortment of thieves, thugs, prostitutes and pimps are solid citizens compared to Claude Gagnon, leader of a notorious pack of in-bred swamp dwellers, who comes to town with murder on his mind and supports himself by doing dirty work for a white slavery ring operating out of a waterfront bar.
When the city's overworked and under-manned police force fails to make progress in the missing persons cases, three people with separate motives set out to find the missing girls and bring the white slavers to justice:
private investigator Frank Lundy, a former football hero who’s 4-F and sensitive about it; Alfred Page, an AWOL black soldier targeted for murder by the manic Claude Gagnon; and newspaper reporter Valerie Gilbreath, an ex-debutante and Mardi Gras queen trying to shake her Old Money image and build a career as a serious journalist. One thing they all could agree on: Sally McGinn should never have gone down to the neon district on a school night.