About the Book
Title: Penchant for Vengeance
Author: Robert Downs
Genre: Mystery
Charlottesville,
Virginia, Police Detective Luke McGinty has a closet filled with demons, along
with a few skeletons; a steady job, but no steady partner or girlfriend; and is
still married to his wife Sallie, even though she’s been dead for three years.
Then his detective work takes a turn for the worse when a body is discovered at
the downtown mall. One dead body isn’t enough, though, and another one turns
up. When ties to a cold murder case in another county present themselves, Luke
realizes that, if he doesn’t tread carefully, he could end up short more than
just a few answers…
Author Bio
Robert Downs aspired to be a writer before he
realized how difficult the writing process was. Fortunately, he'd already
fallen in love with the craft, otherwise his stories might never have
seen print. Originally from West Virginia, he has lived in Virginia,
Massachusetts, New Mexico, and now resides in California. When he’s not
writing, Downs can be found reviewing, blogging, or smiling. To find out more
about his latest projects, or to reach out to him on the Internet, visit the
author’s website: www.RobertDowns.net. PENCHANT FOR
VENGEANCE is his fifth novel.
Links
Author website http://www.RobertDowns.net
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Excerpt
The body was bent
like a pretzel. Wounds that were possibly from a knife or a whip slathered the
body from the neck to the pubic region, deep enough to resemble tattoos. Some
were spaced closely enough to disfigure the top half of the body, rendering an
exact age nearly impossible. A crime of passion entered the forefront of my
mind, and it clung to the roof of my mouth. The victim probably knew his killer
intimately, or was, at the very least, an acquaintance.
The wounds stood out
for me: a multitude of lacerations that made me unable to look away. When I
scanned below the belt, I noticed the mutilated genitalia, rendering the man
much less of one. I didn’t like the look of the scene, with the body splayed at
an obscene angle, dropped right outside the glass front doors of Regal Cinema
to render two of the doors nearly impassable. It resembled something. I just
wasn’t sure what. I’d probably blocked it out of my mind, being that I
frequented this particular cinema and watched more movies than I cared to
admit.
I hoped it never
came back, the thought I had blocked. It always did in the end. That was
what hurt the most: Movies exacerbated the oddities of life.
Killers were usually
born not made, but sometimes, it was the other way around.
The victim’s hands
were positioned above his head, forming a triangle, as if he prayed in death to
some higher power. Positioned that way by the killer, his hands rubbed up
against each other, his head tilted slightly upward. The wounds to the victim’s
hands told me he had put up a struggle, knowing that death was inevitable, yet
he had wanted to live all the way to the end. But it wasn’t enough. It often
never was.
The lack of blood
told me the victim wasn’t killed here, and other than a nude body covered in
wounds and dried blood, like strokes from a brush, with his hands pointed
toward the sky, there were no other obvious signatures. His head was shaved
with only a small area of stubble on his chin. His height and weight fell in the
average region, his eyes were black, and his lips formed a permanent grimace.
He had defensive wounds on both his wrists and the back of his hands, and his
skin was as white as a first-floor apartment.
“Who’s the victim?”
I asked.
“Victim’s name is
unknown, until we run some tests,” the ME said. “Other than being male, and
probably between thirty-five and forty years old, I’m out of guesses.”
Addie Ferguson, the
ME, had a knack for guessing ages, along with her serious attention to detail.
A short woman, with a few extra pounds she could never seem to get rid of, she
preferred ankle-length skirts, black boots, and blue blouses.
“Have we got a time of death?”
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