The D. R. Richards Mystery Series
This series is about the usual things: life, death, love, hatred, money, and revenge. Mainly, it is how a good man adapts himself to a life he never expected, a life that was not meant to be his. The protagonist/narrator is an engineer in his thirties, but there is nothing technical about the books. All you will need is your imagination, no calculations required.
The Richards Mysteries – Book 1
Beyond the Breakers: Available as a paperback and as an ebook from both Amazon and Barnes and Noble. It is also available as an eBook from Apple and Smashwords.
In Beyond the Breakers Dale Riley Richards has lost all he held dear. A year later his emotions are still in shreds. His only companion outside of work is a wounded dog. Two things change that. First, he finds the killer. Second, he falls in love again. Mixing love with revenge brings purpose back to his life, but as it turns out, it’s not easy, for it also brings a sense of guilt.
Beyond the Breakers is available as both an eBook and a paperback. Here is a link for Amazon. The price shown is only for the paperback, but the link gets you to both formats.
Why Write Beyond the Breakers?
Many writers and non-writers have at least one thing in common, grief. At some point they have lost ones dear to them. Sometimes it seems normal, as when a person dies at an old age. And then there are those other cases of prolonged illness or the long lingering results of an accident that lead to premature death.
Yet, arguably the worst loss is the sudden and unexpected loss of your child. The death of a child may be only at their start in life, or they may die in the midst of discovery at any age. And what is left are unfinished lives, torn from their goals and their dreams far earlier than life’s intent.
The world goes on with the merest of notice. You want to scream, but you can’t, for it won’t help. Or, writing skills be damned, you want to put down something on paper that reminds the world of the wonder that’s been lost, but you can’t, not because you can’t write, but because you can’t write about it. And that is where I am stuck. My son of twenty-four years died suddenly, three thousand miles away from his mother and me. It has been nearly twenty years since, and I still cry. Writing this book makes it no better. It is not my way of “letting it out,” but it is a story that knows why it screams in lonely silence. It is a fiction about a non-fiction event of the type that all too many experience. I am not the protagonist, but I know how he feels. I know how he breathes. And I know how he yearns for justice. In my son’s case, the murderer was an accident, a wisp of fate. In the case of the son of Dale Riley Richards, it was a bullet.
The Richard’s Mysteries – Book 2
Hidden Failure: Available as a paperback and as an ebook from both Amazon and Barnes and Noble. It is also available as an eBook from Apple and Smashwords.
In Hidden Failure Dale’s career and life move on to investigating industrial crimes, all dangerous. Other characters move into Dale’s life and the woman he now loves becomes even more deeply involved with the complications. This story hinges on the crash of an experimental airplane, which happens in chapter two. Tighten your seat belt for that chapter.
So who caused it, why, and how? And will you know the answers b y the end of the whole story? Read it and find out!
Here is a link to Hidden Failure on Amazon. The price shown is only for the paperback, but the link gets you to both formats.
The Doug Whittier Novels
The Doug Whittier Novels – Book 1
Fall to Earth: Available as a paperback and as an ebook from both Amazon and Barnes and Noble. It is also available as an eBook from Apple and Smashwords.
The second book series has only one book in it so far. (Writing takes time.) Doug Whittier is a more experienced engineer than Dale Richards in the other series. The story in Fall to Earth centers around an attempt to blackmail the U. S. government by taking control of three experimental spacecraft whose job it is to divert the orbit of a few asteroids. However, the bad guys have figured out a way to divert them toward the earth.
This series deals with issues of technology used for evil purposes.
The first book in this series is Fall to Earth. It is actually my first novel. It was finished in 1994, but the death of my youngest son slowed things down quite a bit. It was published for the first time in early 2013.
Here is a link to Fall to Earth on Amazon. The price shown is only for the paperback, but the link gets you to both formats.
This series provides me an outlet for a darker sort of story, with a little humor thrown in. The next book in the Doug Whittier Mystery series, The Running Water River Bridge, is in writing at this time. Atlas Resurrected has been put aside for the moment for lack of inspiration of where it is going. It will take a lot of rewriting. The Running Water River Bridge is turning out to be quite complex, but it continues to interest me, probably for that very reason. I hope to have it done in a couple of months (late 2015).
The Doug Whittier Novels – Book 2
The Running Water River Bridge is a mystery novel narrated by the protagonist, Doug Whittier, from the first book of this series, Fall to Earth. In this story, Doug is promoted to the Executive Consultant engineering level and immediately is faced with an improperly solved murder mystery that goes back ten years in the company’s past. Doug is tasked with solving the old crime while his employer continues to lie about what really happened. The crime now takes on a new life starting at The Running Water River Bridge. Two more employees die, trade secrets are stolen, and it all seems to be linked to the murder from a decade ago. Two private detective agencies are employed to help, but can’t solve the crimes. Finally, Doug hires one “special person”. Soon things begin to fall into place, and The Running Water River provides the revenge…but were they the right criminals? And what about the aftermath of the lies that are told? Some problems are never fully solved.
Here is a link to Amazon for this book. It is also available from Barnes and Noble. At the moment, it is not available from Smashwords or Apple.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/153315158X
If you want to know more about my writing, go to:
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/wamcat72
- Amazon and Barnes & Noble sell the paperback and ebook versions of both series.
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Thanks, Art