Cold Spell

Although a cold spell would make a dandy metaphor for a murder mystery, here it refers to the fact that Tucker James just left a cushy research position in toasty Atlanta to spend his retirement in the tundra of northern Pennsylvania, and it would likely be a fairly long spell before he left.  But it was when a graduate student brought sexual harassment charges against Gerald Koester, a Princeton-trained professor that Tucker considered moving to Idaho to raise goats, a decision he regretted not making sooner when Melissa Strong was found brutally murdered and Gerald Koester had disappeared into thin air.  But Tucker’s curiosity is aroused  when the University president asked him to assist the local police make sure that there was a not a rush to judgment against the school’s new resident genius.  What started out as shaky consulting relationship between Tucker and Chief Anderson of the Copeland police soon blossomed into honest team effort to find the brutal killer of a slightly odd but essentially harmless coed.  The road to solving this crime took Tucker through the late night halls of the psychology department, into the rougher bars on the edge of Copeland, and even into the moonshine-cookin’ country-side where a smartass academic detectives might do well to watch his manners.  Cold Spell is a fast-paced tale of blazing intellect, familial jealousy, and hot-blooded murder, told as only a smartass detective could.

Below the Frost Line

In the second book in the series, Tucker is again thrown into the criminal investigation business, but he comes to fear that it’s not hot blooded temper to blame this time, but rather a cold-blooded calculation that is responsible for a heap of misery.  When Tucker first found Joe Walker dead in his office of an apparent suicide, he initially thought is was the tragic, yet understandable end of the chronically unhappy sociologist.  After all, Walkers facial expression typically varied only between morose and despondent.  Again enlisted to assist local police in his investigation, Tucker soon realized that is was not that simple. With Walker’s family and friends insisting that that he was not suicidal, Tucker was forced to reluctantly consider murder.  When evidence emerged that Walker’s suicide note was not what it appeared to be, the task transformed from looking for what had pushed Walker over the edge, to searching for a monster that could put a twenty-two caliber pistol to the head of a pathetically sad college professor and anyone else who got in his way.  To find out, Tuckered scoured the academic countryside for the one person who felt that Joe Walker presence on earth was no long required.  Along the way, he consider the obvious sex and money.  The real reason was slightly more complicated and lot more twisted.

Hunter’s Paradise

Chief Anderson did not like the fact that the Habitat-for-Humanity supervisor and night manager of the broken down convenience store took three nine-millimeter slugs in the chest.  It just seems a bit excessive.  The Chief had gotten in the habit of turning to Tucker to help when things looked a little too spooky and decided that his special flare for the psychopathological was just thing need for this little dilemma.  At first Tucker doesn’t see the problem with the robbery scenario, especially since everyone in town believed that the saintly deceased had been offered the position of Pope, but turned it down because he needed Sundays off.  But when another body shows up in Copeland shot the same way, he has to admit there must be something more to it and he dives head first into investigation that ultimately hits too close to the Chief’s own family.  Along the way, Tucker is gets into a barroom fight and even accepts some help from a wannabe local cop from up the road who was looking for a quick boost up the police promotion ladder.  With the chief became preoccupied with family matters, Tucker is forced to rely on Frank Marsh, chief of the campus cops, whose drinking got him thrown off the Chicago Police department. At that point, the only thing that stood between Tucker and an increasing large pile of victims was a slightly overweight black campus cop whose recent escape from an advanced case of alcoholism, left him sober but with a clinical lack of self-confidence.   In the end there was a real question about whether Tucker was better off on his own.  Readers who thrive on the thrill of the hunt will have a hard time seeing this one coming.

How to Survive an Economic Downturn:

1. Pick up your unemployment check

2. Make a huge bowl of macaroni and Cheese

3. Climb into bed with a copy of Below the Frost Line

How to Cure the Common Cold

1. A bowl of venison chili

2. A cup of Folger’s Crystals Instant Coffee

3. The Tucker James Mystery Cold Spell

“His disdainful cop look said that he thought that if I wasn’t a pedophile it was only because I was too stupid to open the childproof latch at the playground”

Dr. Tucker James:  Below the Frost Line

“Like barroom pizza, a weak crime theory often gets better by leaving it on the kitchen table so the bacteria can chew on it over night.”

Tucker James:  Atlanta Connection (forthcoming)

“You may not believe it, but I can go several  minutes without hearing the sound of your voice before I actually pass out”

Julie Turner to Tucker James:  Hunter’s Paradise