GUEST POST and GIVEAWAY
Bryant's Gap
by Michael E. Burge
Bryant's Gap is currently on tour with Partners in Crime Virtual Book Tours. The tour stops here today for a guest post by author Michael E. Burge, an excerpt, and a giveaway. Please be sure to visit the other tour stops as well.
Description
In 1947 postwar Chicago, mob related violence is commonplace. Nothing stands in the way of the "Outfit" when it comes to making money; a body here or there, who really cares as long as everyone’s pockets are lined, but when a man is found dead in a small Illinois town - people take notice.
Bargetown’s Chief of Police Bert Thatcher looks to a seasoned and astute railroad detective, Grady Colston, for help in solving the case. Fate has brought them together, but they soon realize just how much they have in common. A tight bond develops between the two men as they strive to uncover the identity of the man found dead on the railroad tracks - his right arm severed. As the investigation unfolds, surprising details of the man’s past come to light, and the circumstances of his death pose a major dilemma for Grady and Bert.
Excerpt from Chapter 2
Follow the Tracks
Bargetown, IL
Thursday—August 7, 1947
Afternoon
Thursday—August 7, 1947
Afternoon
Bert Thatcher, Bargetown’s chief of police for the last twenty years, was standing about a hundred yards down the railroad tracks when Grady Colston spotted him from the highway.
Grady slowly worked his way down the steep, moss-covered concrete embankment under the overpass. A foot in the wrong place and he would be on his ass, sliding toward the thick patch of bramble below.
When he reached level ground, he walked along the narrow, overgrown path to a small clearing where he had access to the tracks. A dozen crows were circling overhead, and from a nearby grove of pines, he could hear the annoying chatter of a host of others. He climbed the mound of ballast, stepped between the rails, and began moving from one tie to the next, carefully avoiding the pools of oil that had collected in several locations along the way. The last time he’d walked a stretch of tracks he had to scrap the pants he was wearing and use turpentine to remove the tar and oil that coated his newly polished Florsheims.
Grady had been a railroad detective for more than two decades. He had walked miles of track. Not my favorite part of the job, he thought, as he moved gingerly along, instinctively looking for anything that didn’t fit the scene.
He could smell the diesel fuel from the exhaust vents in the corrugated-metal Quonset hut in the lot adjacent to the tracks. The mechanics were busy inside. He could hear the sound of motors and metal-to-metal hammering. The sign on the front of the building read:
WILKES DIESEL ENGINE REPAIR
As he approached, he could see patches of sweat adorning the Chief’s khaki shirt. His dark green trousers were sharply creased, and there was a narrow black stripe running down the outside seam. The green matched the wide-brimmed straw campaign hat that sat high on his head. His holster was slung low around his waist to accommodate his melon-sized belly, and the .45 revolver looked a lot like the one Joel McCrea used to shoot his way through Indian Territory in a movie Grady had seen a year ago.
He’d never met Bert Thatcher, but recognized him from photographs. Bert was puffing on a cigar, studying the scene around the body that lay at his feet. Grady extended his hand. Bert grabbed it, squeezed, and pumped like he was trying to bring water up from a dry well.
“Good to finally meet you, Mr. Colston.”
“It’s a pleasure, please, call me Grady. I don’t know why we haven’t bumped into each other over the years, Chief. We’ve both been at this business a long time.”
“I saw you around the depot a time or two. Meant to introduce myself, but wasn’t quick enough on the draw. You were gone before I could get to you.”
“How did you know I was in town?”
“I had my secretary call the Illinois Central office about an hour ago to get some information on the train schedules, and they told her you were here. Good thing they were able to get ahold of you before you checked out. I’m bettin’ you’ve dealt with a lot more stiffs over the years than I have, and I’ve got a strong feelin’ I’m going to need all the help I can get on this one.”
Bert reached down, lifted the gray tarp from the body, and tossed it aside. It was a man’s body, lying face down, outside and parallel to one of the track rails. The light green short-sleeved shirt and dark pants he wore were matted with dried blood that had flowed from a place below his right shoulder, where his arm had been attached.
“Where the hell is his arm?” Grady asked, scanning the area for a clue.
“Not much mystery there,” Bert said, and pointed to a spot down the tracks about thirty yards. “We threw a tarp over the limb as well. Birds were feeding on it. I reckon dogs may have dragged it to where it is now. There’s a pack of wild ones that cross through this patch a few times a day on their way to the dump. Some of the men who work at Wilkes’ don’t even like walking to their vehicles at night. A couple of those hounds looked rabid.”
While the chief was talking, Grady spotted the trail of blood from the body along the track toward the severed limb.
“The way I see it, this fella was looking for a hitch to somewhere down the line and decided to let the I.C. pay for the ticket.” Bert was chewing on the end of his cigar stub between words. “Looks like he may have made a slight miscalculation when he tried to grab on, got caught up somehow and was dragged a ways. Got a contusion on the side of his coconut the size of a baseball, and cuts and bruises all over his body. He probably fell under the train and it lopped off his arm, or maybe he was lyin’ there and another train came along and did the job. Either way, let’s hope the blow to the head knocked him silly before the arm got ripped. I wouldn’t wish that kind of pain on my worst enemy.”
Praise for the Book
"Bryant’s Gap is an intriguing murder mystery with much stronger character development than you see in many of today’s bestsellers." ~ Kimberly @Lazy Day Books
"Well written, suspenseful and I loved the character development accomplished in this murder mystery. Some books take a while to get into or get my interest at all, but this one reeled me in from the beginning. I enjoyed some Chicago Nostalgia weaved into the book as well, so enjoy and take a chance on this one!" ~ Scott
"Mr. Burge has provided us with a highly complicated plot. Bert and Grady are really interesting characters that develop and become more interesting as the story goes on. Bryant’s Gap is loaded with twists and turns that will leave you guessing all the while you are flipping pages to find out what happens next. Mr. Burge has provided us with a fairly exciting book and well worth the read." ~ VicG
"This is one of those books that make you believe that the system is not always the best. Sometimes you have to go against the rules to have a better outcome. The mystery was good, and I was unsure what was going on with the victim's arm. I thought that it was cut off because of DNA or some evidence. This was also a great mob read. Also the references were fun and I enjoyed them." ~ Amazon Customer
"What a wonderful book. Michael paints a image in your mind as you read the story. The characters truly come to life. The story evolves, you follow in your mind and live through the characters. You imagine the scene, you follow as your turn each page. I loved each page, each chapter and the end was uplifting. Great job all together." ~ John S. Evers
Guest Post by the Author
My Childhood Experiences and their Impact on My Writing
About a month ago, I presented my book, Bryant’s Gap, at a library not far from where I was born. During the presentation I was discussing the locations where I grew up. A member of the audience asked if my childhood had significantly impacted my writing. I responded in the affirmative, but didn’t have much time to elaborate.
During the drive home, I began to ponder that question, and I concluded that my upbringing had indeed significantly impacted me, and therefore my writing, in a number of different ways. There were several contributing factors.
First, although I had a brother and a sister, we were many years apart, and didn’t grow up together. Each of us had sort of an only child upbringing. There weren’t many children in the neighborhood, so I spent a great deal of time playing alone. I would make up games to occupy myself, and I even had an imaginary friend I called Junior. He and I had a lot of good times together! Fortunately, I abandoned Junior somewhere around second grade, and haven’t had any imaginary friends since. The point is, it appears I developed a fairly vivid imagination at an early age.
Furthermore, my parents had a lot of friends and were always on the go. Although I wasn’t always elated about it, I often went along for the ride. Whereas some children lead relatively sheltered lives, by the time I was ten years old, I had become acquainted with hundreds of diverse people in varied settings; a large pool of personalities to meld together and sculpt into characters for a novel.
Lastly, both my parents worked, so during the fifties, when I was in grade school, I would arrive home from school to find an empty apartment, a note, and some spending money. Often, after I did my homework, I was out the door headed for one of two movie theatres within walking distance. On the way, I would stop for dinner, a fifteen cent hamburger, fries and a Coke. I guess I would have been what people refer to today as a latch key kid. I saw a ton of movies during my youth, and to this day I still love them. There was no rating system in place back then, so many of the movies had a mature theme. I remember seeing a film in 1957 called 12 Angry Men. It was a movie about the deliberation of the guilt or acquittal of an eighteen-year old boy for the alleged stabbing of his father. The entire drama unfolded in the juror room. It wasn’t exactly the type of film you would expect a kid to be interested in, but I truly enjoyed it. I was eleven years old at the time. I remember replaying the movie in my mind for quite some time, intrigued by the intricacies of the plot.
I view fiction writing as the process of retrieving experiences and images from the memory banks of the mind, using imagination to blend them together, and shape them into characters and situations to create a story. The more data available to draw upon, the easier it is for one to write a robust story.
Do childhood experiences affect our writing? The way I see it, my childhood created a vast reservoir of material - all I need do is put my imagination to work.
About the Author
Michael E. Burge learned to play the piano in his forties, golf in his fifties, and now, recently retired from a career in marketing, has gone on to publish his first novel - Bryant’s Gap. Set in 1947, the story is peppered with childhood memories of the locations where he grew up; a small town on the Wabash River and the suburbs of Chicago.
Giveaway
Enter the tour-wide giveaway for a chance to win a $20 Amazon gift card or one of five ebook copies of Bryant's Gap by Michael E. Burge (US only).
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