Being Someone Else

Whiskey Creek Press (www.whiskeycreekpress.com) will publish Being Someone Else, fourth in the Sticks Hetrick mystery series, on July 15.

Some people believe violence is foreign to our nature. Dan ‘Sticks’ Hetrick, retired chief and consultant to the Swatara Creek police department, knows better. We put a lid on our natural tendency to violence when we started living in groups, devising moral codes to hold it in check and allow us to live in harmony with others. But, deep down in the Id, there is always that tendency to violence.

When an out-of-state reporter is found murdered in the restroom of a disreputable bar the tendency to violence spirals in the rural Pennsylvania community, and the investigative trail keeps bringing Hetrick and his team back to the family of a wealthy doctor who has come back to his hometown in retirement.

Hetrick and his protégé Officer Flora Vastine are joined by an old friend from his State Police days as they unravel old secrets and mysteries in a tale with as many shocking twists as a country road.

I’ll be posting sample chapters in the coming weeks.

As noted, this is the fourth in the Hetrick mystery series and I’m now at work on the fifth (tentative title, Practice To Deceive). If you haven’t read them, now’s a good time to start. The novels are available in print and electronic form, including Kindle. Other novels in the series are Something In Common, Cruel Cuts and Corruption’s Child.

In a review of Corruption’s Child in the summer issue of Mysterical-E, Montiese McKenzie said: “It's a well-written and short book but it leaves readers wanting more of these characters and this town. From one page to the next, you aren't sure just what's going to happen but in a good way. There is a buildup to a slightly predictable but no less exciting climax and when the mystery is solved, it's breathless and fantastic.” You can read the full review here: http://www.mystericale.com/index.php?issue=current_issue&body=file&file=book_reviews.htm

And, by the way, my short story, “An Undesirable Customer,” is in the same issue: http://www.mystericale.com/index.php?issue=current_issue&body=file&file=customer.htm