The Scandal of Mercy
Lieutenant Joe Boyd gets some surprising news from his wife, Kate. He barely has time to process it when he’s given an assignment to confront an aging ex-con, just paroled for a brutal murder committed 36 years ago. The man’s on his way back there now, even though he has no friends and no family left in Culpepper. The chief’s convinced this can only mean trouble. When Joe and his partner Hank visit Sam Clemens, their instincts tell them there might be more to this story than anyone imagines. Much more. But their captain, the courts, and everyone else in town believes this murder was solved decades ago. Are they right? Is a paroled killer coming back to town now? Or has the real killer been here all along, roaming the streets of their lovely little town?
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“What do you wanna be when you grow up?”
Kids get asked that question all the time. When my son was five, he knew. “I wanna be a green Batman.” By high school I knew. I wanted to be an author of novels. My composition teacher was the spark that lit this fire. She went out of her way to encourage my feeble offerings. “You could really be a writer if you wanted to,” she said. Secretly, I began to write poems and short stories. Only my teacher and mother could read them (such things clashed badly with the surfer-guy persona I’d worked so hard to fabricate at school).
After becoming a Christian, my attention shifted in a different direction. I met Cindi, my wife-to-be. Then came a call to pastoral ministry. Then fatherhood. I still loved to write, but found little time for it. In the mid-90′s, we decided I needed a relaxing hobby. Cindi suggested I start writing again. I read some great how-to books and found some wonderful friends on a Christian fiction writer’s board on AOL (back when AOL was the Internet). A year later, my first novel was complete.
It was soon picked up by a top literary agent, but she found it difficult to market. Not much interest back then in a faith-based suspense thriller with a military edge. Shortly after that, the idea for The Unfinished Gift came to me…. Read on.
