Saturday Spotlight - DB Grady

Good Morning Friends!

It is with great pleasure I bring to you today's spotlight, DB Grady with his book Red Planet Noir.

D.B. Grady is a freelance writer and novelist. He is a graduate of Louisiana State University and lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana with his wife and family.


Grady is a former paratrooper with U.S. Army Special Operations Command and is a veteran of Afghanistan.

He is a member of the Authors Guild and Bayou Writers Group. He's been published everywhere from Boys' Life to The Atlantic, where he is a regular contributor, and his debut novel, Red Planet Noir, won the 2010 Indie Book Award for Science Fiction. The book is currently available in paperback and on Kindle.

 

Michael Sheppard was the best private eye in New Orleans, and then his wife left him. He finds solace in the bottle and his career in the toilet. Nights at the casino pay the bills, until they don’t, and leg breakers start knocking at the door, and knocking out his teeth.

When he’s hired by a bombshell heiress to check out a murder on Mars, it’s a chance for a new start. But as the case unfolds, he makes enemies of cops and gangsters alike in an investigation racing from stately mansions to smoke-filled speakeasies, from deserted ice colonies to mining towns on the asteroid belt.

All he wanted was a paycheck to clear some gambling debt. Now Michael is the key figure in a murder conspiracy that’s left a vacuum in the halls of power, with the labor union, mob and military vying for control of Mars.

Excerpt:

When the phone rang, I was half-drunk, half-dressed, half-asleep, and half expecting it to be the phone company reminding me that the bill was past due. I didn’t have any money because I didn’t have any clients, and I wouldn’t have any clients if they cut my line, which I had told them only last month and the month before that. They were becoming a nuisance.

So I pulled on a shirt that wasn’t very dirty, but smelled of Scotch and strippers, my signature cologne, and pressed the Answer button. A figure flickered on the telephone screen. The phone company only hired brunettes, because that’s what the owner liked to fool around with, and only hired men, for the same reason. She was neither, and carried her curves as if to prove the point.

“Mike speaking,” I said, fishing a lighter from my shirt pocket.

“Mike Sheppard, the private investigator?” she asked.

“That’s what they stenciled on my door,” I said, striking a Lucky, trying hard not to leer. Women like her didn’t call men like me for business and they certainly didn’t call for pleasure. She was either selling umbrellas or insurance; probably pretty good at it. I took a long drag. I bet she smelled great.

“My name is Sofia Reed.”

“I’m not interested in buying—”

“Do you still take cases?” she asked.

I sat up and ran a hand through my thinning hair, taming it. “Yes,” I said. “Yeah, all the time. You’re lucky you caught me. I was just—”

“I heard that you’re the best in the city. I need you.”

She must not have seen the news lately. “I need you, too,” I said. “I mean, yes, I’m the best in the city.”

“It’s about my father,” she said, her voice wavering. She blinked in hard repetition.

“Is he all right?” I asked.

“He’s dead,” she said.

He was still doing better than me. I nodded with empathy, and took an understanding drag on my cigarette. A teardrop rolled down her face, cutting a salty pink trail through her rouge-laden cheeks.

She continued. “You don’t recognize me, do you?”

I shook my head slowly and hunched into the telephone screen. I wouldn’t have forgotten her if I’d had a lobotomy. She had the kind of lips that could stop a prison riot.

“It happened three weeks ago. My father was the colonel on Mars who was murdered.” She dabbed an eye with a handkerchief. “Does any of this sound familiar?”

“I, well, no, I’ve been too busy, you know, with cases to follow the news.”

“I don’t expect Earth takes much interest in our affairs, anyway, with your war and all.”

It wasn’t that. I didn’t take interest in the war, either. “So your father was murdered and the police can’t solve the case?”

“The police aren’t trying,” she said. “They’re calling it suicide.”

***

Red Planet Noir is available for Kindle and in Print at Amazon and other online outlets as well as through your local independent book store.

D.B. Grady can be found on the Internet at http://www.dbgrady.com/ and reached by email at db@dbgrady.com


Well Friends, that's this week's Saturday Spotlight - check back every week for more great authors and their books!

Until later...take care & Be Blessed!
PamT