Death at Fort Devens

April 25, 2022
Set in 1985, Colt’s strong third mystery featuring Boston cop-turned-PI Andy Roark (after 2020’s Back Bay Blues) takes Roark to Fort Devens, a Massachusetts Army base, at the request of David Billings, his former lieutenant in Vietnam, who saved Roark’s life during a North Vietnamese ambush. Billings, who’s on track to be promoted to colonel, is worried about his 17-year-old daughter, Judy. She’s not been home for several days and has been dating one of the enlisted men under his command. Roark is eager to repay his debt to Billings by looking for her, starting with leads connected to her love life. What he learns makes him worried that Judy’s fallen in with a violent drug-dealing thug, information that takes him to Boston’s seedy and dangerous Combat Zone district in search of her. Roark’s anger issues and his untreated trauma from his wartime experiences complicate the investigation. Colt doesn’t pull any punches and plays fair with the reader before the satisfying reveal. Fans of Robert B. Parker’s Spenser novels interested in a grittier private investigator will be eager to see more of Roark. Agent: Cynthia Manson, Cynthia Manson Literary.

April 15, 2022
Doing a favor for a fellow veteran who saved his life in Vietnam launches Boston shamus Andy Roark on a search littered with dead ends. By 1985, Lt. Col. David Billings' daughter, Judy, has reached the age when she's started hanging out with unsuitable young men, and some not so young, and stopped listening to either her father or her mother, who's drying out in Palm Springs once again. Now Judy's gone AWOL, and Dave wants Andy, who's never forgotten that he owes him his life, to look for her. Asking Dave to put aside a dollar to pay him, Andy hunts down Judy's boyfriend, Derrick Page, a motor pool mechanic at Fort Devens, where Dave's been assigned while he waits for his next inevitable promotion. Derrick insists he's an ex-boyfriend who can't help, and Judy's friend Cindy, a waitress at a bowling alley, can only point to Kevin, the older guy Judy's been hanging around with, whose nickname, K-nice, is not entirely accurate. Andy and his ex-lover Sue Teller make a reconnaissance tour of Boston's Combat Zone, but although Andy stirs up a certain amount of collateral damage, he doesn't find Judy. It turns out that Dave has known all along who Judy was with but hasn't mentioned it for personal reasons. So Andy starts over again, armed with new information and a sharper sense of wariness. There's only one plot twist that could possibly cap this trail of red herrings and false leads, and very few readers will be as surprised as Andy when it arrives. The target audience: private-eye fans who greet a two-page glossary of military terms with delight.

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