| Author: | M.W.Gordon | ISBN: | 1230002230443 |
| Publisher: | Swift Creeks Press | Publication: | March 22, 2018 |
| Imprint: | Language: | English |
| Author: | M.W.Gordon |
| ISBN: | 1230002230443 |
| Publisher: | Swift Creeks Press |
| Publication: | March 22, 2018 |
| Imprint: | |
| Language: | English |
In this third episode of the Macduff Brooks fly fishing mystery/suspense series, Macduff and a client fishing on the Madison River near Ennis, Montana, watch as a drift boat approaches with only one person aboard. When the two boats converge, the person proves to be a friend of Macduff. Her head rises out of a wicker man basket; a mistletoe wreath is on her head. There are explosives tied on the front of the basket, and a sign reads: You’re Next, Lucinda! The day is June 21st―the summer solstice. A digital clock is counting down. Macduff has only a few seconds to row away. A horrible explosion destroys the other boat, killing his friend. Macduff is injured but his client is safe.
Two people in Lucinda Lang’s and Macduff’’s past begin to reappear. Lucinda, Macduff’s companion and maybe fiancée, receives a devastating letter from New Orleans. Robert Ellsworth-Kent, to whom she was married for two months while working in London years ago, has been released from prison. He writes that he is coming to claim her. With him is a woman he met at a bar in New Orleans, Hannah Markel. Hannah is the twin sister of Helga Markel, who was one of the killers of the shuttle gals a few years earlier. The two had found a common interest―the ancient religion of the people of the Orkney Islands off northern Scotland, who practice religious ceremonies, including sacrificing people inside a wicker man and wearing a mistletoe wreath.
On September 21st, the fall equinox, another wicker man and mistletoe explosion occurs on the North Platte River in Wyoming, this time killing a friend of Macduff’s from St. Augustine who was building a cabin high in the mountains near Encampment. Macduff and Lucinda and the authorities in Montana and Wyoming are worried. December 21st, the winter solstice, is fast approaching. They have no leads, no knowledge of Ellsworth-Kent or Markel, nor where another explosion might take place. It does occur on the winter solstice, on the Clark River in northwest Montana near Missoula. The person killed is another acquaintance of Macduff, a Montana law professor Macduff knew in his earlier life as law professor Maxwell Hunt in Florida.
Macduff’s old nemesis, Guatemalan Juan Pablo Herzog, continues after Macduff. He offers money to Allan Whitman, discharged CIA agent who knows Macduff’s history as Professor Hunt because he was at the meeting when Macduff decided on a new name and location. Whitman and Herzog meet in a back room in a bar in D.C. Herzog leaves on foot, without any information other than that Professor Hunt is alive. Whitman leaves on a final trip to the morgue.
Macduff and Lucinda try to determine where the killers may strike again. And strike they do on the spring equinox, March 21st, with another wicker man and mistletoe murder of a guide Macduff went to guide school with. It happens on a drift boat near Henry’s Fork River in Idaho. Finally Macduff and Lucinda conclude that there will be one more killing on June 21st on the Yellowstone River, and it might be Lucinda. And likely Macduff as well. In a dramatic ending it fails. But Ellsworth-Kent and Merkel flee and are not found. The book ends with a 17-year-old woman who is the mirror image of Macduff’s deceased wife, El, knocking on Macduff’s cabin door and announcing herself as Macduff’s daughter.
In this third episode of the Macduff Brooks fly fishing mystery/suspense series, Macduff and a client fishing on the Madison River near Ennis, Montana, watch as a drift boat approaches with only one person aboard. When the two boats converge, the person proves to be a friend of Macduff. Her head rises out of a wicker man basket; a mistletoe wreath is on her head. There are explosives tied on the front of the basket, and a sign reads: You’re Next, Lucinda! The day is June 21st―the summer solstice. A digital clock is counting down. Macduff has only a few seconds to row away. A horrible explosion destroys the other boat, killing his friend. Macduff is injured but his client is safe.
Two people in Lucinda Lang’s and Macduff’’s past begin to reappear. Lucinda, Macduff’s companion and maybe fiancée, receives a devastating letter from New Orleans. Robert Ellsworth-Kent, to whom she was married for two months while working in London years ago, has been released from prison. He writes that he is coming to claim her. With him is a woman he met at a bar in New Orleans, Hannah Markel. Hannah is the twin sister of Helga Markel, who was one of the killers of the shuttle gals a few years earlier. The two had found a common interest―the ancient religion of the people of the Orkney Islands off northern Scotland, who practice religious ceremonies, including sacrificing people inside a wicker man and wearing a mistletoe wreath.
On September 21st, the fall equinox, another wicker man and mistletoe explosion occurs on the North Platte River in Wyoming, this time killing a friend of Macduff’s from St. Augustine who was building a cabin high in the mountains near Encampment. Macduff and Lucinda and the authorities in Montana and Wyoming are worried. December 21st, the winter solstice, is fast approaching. They have no leads, no knowledge of Ellsworth-Kent or Markel, nor where another explosion might take place. It does occur on the winter solstice, on the Clark River in northwest Montana near Missoula. The person killed is another acquaintance of Macduff, a Montana law professor Macduff knew in his earlier life as law professor Maxwell Hunt in Florida.
Macduff’s old nemesis, Guatemalan Juan Pablo Herzog, continues after Macduff. He offers money to Allan Whitman, discharged CIA agent who knows Macduff’s history as Professor Hunt because he was at the meeting when Macduff decided on a new name and location. Whitman and Herzog meet in a back room in a bar in D.C. Herzog leaves on foot, without any information other than that Professor Hunt is alive. Whitman leaves on a final trip to the morgue.
Macduff and Lucinda try to determine where the killers may strike again. And strike they do on the spring equinox, March 21st, with another wicker man and mistletoe murder of a guide Macduff went to guide school with. It happens on a drift boat near Henry’s Fork River in Idaho. Finally Macduff and Lucinda conclude that there will be one more killing on June 21st on the Yellowstone River, and it might be Lucinda. And likely Macduff as well. In a dramatic ending it fails. But Ellsworth-Kent and Merkel flee and are not found. The book ends with a 17-year-old woman who is the mirror image of Macduff’s deceased wife, El, knocking on Macduff’s cabin door and announcing herself as Macduff’s daughter.
