The primary aim of the "Novel Excerpts" blog category is to showcase my creative writing, specifically from the novels I've written. Hopefully, these posts will provide a glimpse into my storytelling style, themes, and narrative skills. It's an opportunity to share my artistic expressions and the worlds I've created through my novels.
The Case of the Perfectionist Professor, written in 2018, is my sixth novel. I'll post a chapter a day over the next few weeks.
Book Blurb
Late on New Year’s Eve in the small town of Boaz, Alabama, Snead State Community College teacher Adam Parker was found dead slumped over in his car. A preliminary investigation indicated the fifty-year-old biology professor died of a heart attack. Marissa Booth, Adam’s daughter and Vanderbilt School of Divinity professor, didn’t agree.
Four days later, Marissa hired the local private detective firm of Connor Ford to investigate her father’s death. She declared local police officer Jake Stone had likely murdered her father. She pointed Ford to a multi-month Facebook feud between Adam and several local people, including Stone and Boaz City Councilman Lawton Hawks. The controversy allegedly related to Adam’s research that contended that, in layman’s terms, long-term indoctrination caused actual genetic mutations that directly affected future generation’s ability to reason.
Over the next year, Connor Ford discovered multiple and independent sources of motivation to quiet and possibly murder the controversial professor. Ford learned that a civil lawsuit and widespread public outcry had effectively run Adam out of Knoxville, where he was a biology professor for over thirteen years. Ford also learned that Adam had become the number one enemy of Roger Williams, a self-made local businessman, and his son Alex, who is a Republican candidate for governor of Alabama. Adam had discovered Alex and Glock, Inc., the Austrian-based gun manufacturer, was exploring not only the possibility of setting up a large facility in Boaz but also supplying pistols for Alex’s highly touted and controversial ‘arm the teachers’ proposal.
Connor Ford has his hands full enough with these suspects. Add in his need to determine whether Lawton Hawks and Jake Stone are friends or foes of Roger and Alex, which accentuate the pressure no normal small-town private detective can handle.
Will Connor’s discovery there is a link between Dayton, Tennessee, and the 1929 Scopes Monkey trial and a rogue group of CIA operatives bend Connor and his two associates to the breaking point?
Read this mystery/thriller to find out if Adam Parker was murdered and how, and what role the long-standing controversy between science and religion had in destroying the life of a single perfectionist professor.
Chapter 55
Camilla was still asleep when I slipped out of bed at 6:00 a.m. It had been a long night. I eased downstairs, poured a mug full of coffee, and left her a note on the counter. There was no way I could go to church and act the role of a devoted boyfriend. Something was all haywire about Jake’s confession and I had to do everything I could to appease my dissatisfaction.
It was a long and boring day. By mid-afternoon I had spent over eight hours either searching and reading in Blair’s Evernote database, or exploring the Open Curtains App on Adam’s iPad. My focus once again had been Paige. I hated hunches, especially ones that seemed glaringly ignorant, almost stupid. I had fought an internal battle most of the day. One side convinced there had to be some tiny air molecule that I would find to justify my subconscious desire for more evidence related to Paige. The other side constantly reminded me that I was such a loser and spending this valuable time so narrowly focused was yet another reason I would never be as good a detective as Bobby Sorrells.
Shortly before three o’clock I stumbled upon an interesting journal entry. It was dated December 24th. I recalled having read it before but one thing I had missed. Paige and Natalie were sharing a meal with Adam at his house. After they had finished eating they exchanged presents. Adam had surprised the girls with tickets to an upcoming Eagles concert in Huntsville, scheduled for January 28th. I had checked my notepad and learned that was the day Lawton Hawks was found murdered. The girls were even more surprised when Adam told them Hannah Knott and Steven would be joining the three of them.
This discovery had given me hope I might have a way to determine whether Jake had been truthful in his confession that Paige couldn’t have killed Lawton Hawks; she was in Huntsville at an Eagles concert. It was nearly 6:00 p.m. when Hannah returned my call. I wasn’t surprised she remembered the concert. She shared how Adam had given her the tickets a few days before he was murdered and how excited he was about the planned end of January trip to see a group that he had loved for decades. I was surprised with an unsolicited statement right before we ended our call. “Steven and I were disappointed that Natalie and Paige had not been able to attend. I guess they didn’t feel it was right since Adam had bought the tickets and he wouldn’t be coming along.” I had asked Hannah if she knew anything specific. What excuse they had used. What else they might have said. The only thing Hannah remembered was Paige saying, “my little surrogate isn’t feeling well.” Hannah was sure that Paige had referred to Natalie. What an odd thing to say. Or, was it?
After my call with Hannah ended, I could not concentrate, so I drove home halfway satisfied with my day’s production. No doubt Jake Stone had lied about Paige’s alibi.
The Pencil-Driven Life 