Welcome to the Release Day Blitz for The Death of Jack Nylund, hosted by Bewitching Book Tours!
The
Death of Jack Nylund
Gods and Monsters Book
One
By David F Porteous
Genre: Urban Fantasy
ISBN: 978-1-291-03025-9
Number of pages:127
Word Count: 37,000
Cover Artist: Rob Moran
Book Description:
America, 1922. Ten years
have passed since The Lines went up, dividing the States and the
world into isolated pockets. The oligarchs are gangsters, titans of
industry, monsters – the secret masters of mankind. They have
endured a decade of cold war stalemate – but with forces equally
weighted, the life of one man might be enough to change the fate of
all men.
US Federal Marshal Clay Falk must bring Jack Nylund
to New York. For the Marshal and his deputies the financial rewards
are enormous, but in a landscape of shifting loyalties Falk is soon
made a counter-offer he can’t refuse. The war can be ended in a
single night – the price is the honour of a legend and the life of
a god.
Private Investigator Walter Black has no idea his
latest missing person’s case is the balance on which the world
rests. Jack Nylund’s sister is dying and Walter must track Jack’s
scent across America, through ruined lives, secret addictions and
unforgettable pasts. The enemy he must overcome is one he’s all too
familiar with. The cost of his failure would be the death of Jack
Nylund.
Read an excerpt:
“This is a picture of
him from 1919, just after the war, looking like he slept in that
uniform all the way from France. He still had that face, but he
wasn’t the same. I know there’s men who came back changed: the
Paterson boy up in Brownville hung himself that summer. Nobody talked
about it much, and I suppose that was for the best. But Jack wasn’t
like that; it hadn’t been a terrible thing for him, I don’t
think. Or if it had been, then it was one of those terrible things
you get through and it sets you free.” She said it in a deliberate,
emotionless voice and finally passed the small black and white
photograph to Walter Black.
Mary
Howard’s hands and the photo smelled of Johnson’s Baby Powder and
Ivory soap.
“I
knew the truth before he did,” she said. “About this place. About
him. He’d come back from the war having seen the world and, well, I
can’t imagine what else. He’d grown a head taller, but Auburn was
still a small town; too small for him. Sure enough, he was gone
before the winter set in.”
“This
is your only picture?” he asked.
“It’s
the most recent one. I have couple of older photos of him with our
mother. I don’t suppose those would be much use to you. I hope he
still looks like this: can’t imagine him as anything else. Is it
enough?”
“You
said he wrote to you,” he reminded her.
“From
hotels. I think only because there was paper and he had nothing to
do. Backwards, forwards, ‘cross a dozen states: as far east as
Chicago and then three months later Baton Rouge and Beaumont, Texas.
I kept all of them, wrote back the day I got each one, but I doubt he
saw more than a handful of my replies. And so what? What stories did
I have to tell him? Then a year ago the letters stopped. It was just
after the baby came and before Arnold – that was my husband –
before he passed away. For a couple of months I’d wait for the
postman every day and some days he even had a letter for me. But it
was never from Jack. His last one was from the Ramsay in Des Moines.
I wrote there so many times the hotel manager wrote back asking me to
stop.”
“Can
I see the letters?” Walter asked.
“Of
course, let me—” She was cut-off by the sudden, sharp cry of the
baby in the other room. “Like as not, he’ll need changing. Can
you give me a few minutes?”
He
waited at the table and took another sip of the cheap, bitter coffee.
The kitchen was clean, and worn from use and cleaning. The stove was
older than the house around it, cannibalised from another home no
grander than this one. A sink of similar ancestry was attached to the
wall by iron bolts and stained with tears of indelible orange rust.
Mary
Howard returned with a shoebox of letters under one arm and a
wide-eyed child pressed to her side by the other. Her son – whose
looks strongly favoured his mother – was Arnold Jack Howard.
“Pleased
to meet you Mr Howard, I’m Walter Black,” he said and extended
his hand. The boy grabbed the top half of his thumb and beamed a
toothless smile. “That’s quite a grip you have there.”
Mary
sat back down and placed the collection of letters on the table. “You
have a way with children Mr Black; little Jack doesn’t usually take
to strangers.”
He
asked, “May I see them?”
Her
eyes followed his and with surprise she noticed the hand perched on
top of the box, its fingers gripping the cardboard, like something
precious beyond value, like a handhold on the edge of a precipice.
Recognising the hand was hers, she exhaled and let go.
“I
don’t know what use they’ll be. But if you need them, that’s
fine. I have most of them memorised.”
He
sorted the envelopes by eye. Four different sizes, eleven different
shades of cream and white, one blue. Postmarks from fourteen states;
nothing east of Chicago, Illinois, nor anything west of Grand
Junction, Colorado. They smelled of the house and the shoebox and
woman who had read them uncounted times. A handful were from Des
Moines, but he lifted three others that looked the same and found a
return address pre-printed onto the flap of each: Savoy Hotel, Kansas
City.
As
tactfully as he could, Walter Black said, “You should prepare
yourself for the possibility—”
“That
he’s dead? I know.”
“You
should prepare yourself for the possibility that he’s alive and
doesn’t want to come back.”
She
replied in that same flat voice, “I need you to find him Mr Black.
If he’s dead then I don’t know what I’ll do, but if he’s
alive he’s got no choice. My son is all that matters to me now and
he’ll need someone when I’m gone.”
Mary
Howard’s heart would not last the year, so the doctors said. Her
mother died of the same thing at thirty-seven, though Mary was only
twenty-eight. Stress, they called it; stress had cut her years as a
grown woman in half, cut her time as a mother to nothing.
Walter
continued, “This isn’t as simple as making a few calls or writing
some letters.”
She
held herself straight-backed as he explained his terms.
The
blue cotton dress she wore had a small mending stitch at the
shoulder. He’d seen this dress a hundred times on as many women.
Such as it was, it was certainly the nicest thing she owned and she
had worn it as much for herself as for him.
“I
know the price,” she said, “and I will pay it.” Her desperation
and the defiant setting of her jaw was a promise she couldn’t
break. They didn’t discuss payment again.
“I’ll
leave in the morning for Kansas City and call you if I find anything
there.” He stood and picked up his hat from the table, taking the
photograph and a selection of letters, as many as he could fit in a
pocket.
“I
don’t have a telephone,” she said.
“I’ll
write you, unless I can bring him back with me faster. Or unless it’s
not news you’d want to get by letter.”
She
rose to show him to the door and replied, “I’ll wait for your
letters, then.”
Buy links: Paperback \ Kindle
About
the Author:
David F Porteous is a
social research consultant and author of the novel Singular and the
forthcoming Gods & Monsters series. The following are randomly
selected biographical details about David - hit refresh to learn
more.
Early Life
David attended Cockenzie
and Port Seton Primary School where he learned to spell and write his
name in cursive. The value of these once impressive skills has been
substantially undermined by subsequent technological developments.
Influences
His favourite authors
include Iain Banks, George V. Higgins, Douglas Adams, Neil Gaiman and
Terry Pratchett.
Other Interests
In his teens and early
twenties he used to write poetry. People shouldn't try to find it;
none of it was good.
Professional Work
In 2002 he graduated from
Edinburgh Napier University with a degree in Marketing Management.
His honours dissertation asserted that there was a bright future
ahead for DVD rental stores. Over time this assertion proved to be
both wrong and stupid. (He is not giving back the degree).
@dfpiii
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Destiny Unveiled
Laura “Luna” DeLuca lives at the beautiful Jersey shore with her husband and four children. She loves writing in the young adult genre because it keeps her young at heart. In addition to writing fiction, Laura is also the sole author of a popular review blog called New Age Mama. She is an active member of her local pagan community, and has been studying Wicca for close to eight years.
