The Lady of Corpsewood Manor, Book 4 of the Craige Ingram Mystery Series
by Hawk MacKinney
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BLURB:
In the spacious den of Moccasin Hollow, his ancestral South Carolina home, part-time PI, exNavy SEAL Craige Ingram examines a platinum brooch designed like a dragonfly inside a jeweler’s box that he has discovered at the crime scene of Corpsewood Manor. It is a remarkable piece of art…its wings and body worked in exceptional detail. Focusing toward the expected bulbous round eyes, his suspicions jar full throttle. Instead of a head, the empty sockets of a skull leer at him. His gut feelin’s tell him his SEAL buddy Grayson MacGerald’s investigation is considerably more than arson and a double murder trying to hide the theft of classic automobiles. The smoldering rubble of secluded Corpsewood Manor leads Ingram and another of their SEAL Team, Colorado Aspen ski buddy Spinner Krespinak, into a seedy tangle of smuggling crisscrossed and an unexpected encounter with a dead assassin from one of Spinner’s "closed" cases.
Excerpt :This was a dead woman. The blunderbuss-shocker of seeing that particular woman-wraith joggled his reality. Craige couldn’t have been more shaken if one of their KIA SEAL casualties had unzipped the body bag, stood up in full dress uniform, came to attention, and marched off. He wrestled with brain-locked premonitions. She was like a chokehold of death, much too lethally close for his liking. As quick as he thought it, he dismissed this ready-made way to ending up very dead. It almost had been for him and Spinner. Couldn’t have been her…but…if it was, how was she here? Why was she here? Was she on a search and destroy, here to take care of loose ends? Following him? His thoughts were disjointed. He felt like a lonesome abandoned fence post…lost for words in a honeysuckle-snarled weedy field. Brain-locked, his feet epoxied to the spot like he was a pole-axed chunk of granite.
The pain of betrayal she'd put Kentucky-born, Texas-raised David Wellington Spinner Krespinak through came flooding back, fresh, beyond nasty, and stoking a rising anger. Craige took it considerably more than personal when anyone locked cross-hairs on a friend. Spinner was a hard-as-titanium, damn fine XO. Solved problems; didn’t pass them on. Took the heat for the dirty work Commanding Officer Craige wanted done. Spinner, Gray and Craige as close, maybe closer, than blood kin. Had shared guts and gore and KIA losses during more than a few ReCon-and-RetrieveOps. With options down to one, if de rigueur critical they’d left their share of blood spattered calling cards. His backside had been in a fair share of close calls, saved more than once by SEAL mates. Stay smokescreen concealed, kill if you have to…or be killed, unforeseeables could pack deadly surprises. Some in CTU/S paid that price.
MY REVIEW OF CORPSEWOOD MANOR
The Lady of Corpsewood Manor by Hawk MacKinney is a 2012 Wandering Sage Publication
I received a copy of this book in conjunction with Green Goddess Tours in exchange for an honest review.
"At one time or another most born and raised South Carolinians and a good many Georgians had heard tales about Corpsewood Manor. It was a ready-made for Halloween talk.
Around and about the Savanno bayou- backwaters of the railroad town of Hamburg there were plenty who rehashed and embellished tales of haints at Corpsewood... and worse. No wild Nighthorse bogeyman could have envisioned the macabre inferno consuming Corpsewood already reaching out to the unsuspecting, from the Rocky Mountain redoubts of the glitterati Aspen to the humid vine- twisted river bayous astraddle the Tsalaki Cherokee River between South Carolina and Georgia."
Set in the Carolinas, Craige is called in along with two other of his SEAL partners to investigate the apparent arson of an old storied home. Several dead bodies were found in the burnt out rumble. The whole thing looked staged. The trouble was the autopsy results were odd, there were rumors flying all over about drugs, jewelry heist, and smuggling rings. Things really get interesting though when an old enemy they thought was dead, shows up at the scene.
This novel of mystery and suspense has all the elements required for a good tale. There are military good guys now fighting crime as civilians and still have that unshakeable bond. There are romances and broken hearts, loyalties and betrayals and at the heart of the crime, as so often is the case lies greed.
This author has a good imagination and his story plot is well thought out. However, this book suffers from editing issues. If an editor could get their hands on this novel it would be a blessing. There were grammatical mistakes and misspellings.
My instinct as a book reviewer is to grade this one down due to the grammatical errors that broke up the flow of the story. However, since the story itself was a redeemer, I will give this one a B- ( 3.5 stars)
AUTHOR Bio and Links:
With postgraduate degrees and faculty appointments in several medical universities, Hawk MacKinney has taught graduate courses in both the United States and Jerusalem. In addition to professional articles and texts on chordate neuroembryology, Hawk has authored several works of fiction.
Hawk began writing mysteries for his school newspaper. His works of fiction, historical love stories, science fiction and mystery-thrillers are not genre-centered, but plot-character driven, and reflect his southwest upbringing in Arkansas, Texas and Oklahoma. Moccasin Trace, a historical novel nominated for the prestigious Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction and the Writers Notes Book Award, details the family bloodlines of his serial protagonist in the Craige Ingram Mystery Series… murder and mayhem with a touch of romance. Vault of Secrets, the first book in the Ingram series, was followed by Nymrod Resurrection, Blood and Gold, and The Lady of Corpsewood Manor. All have received national attention. Hawk’s latest release in the Ingram series is due out this fall with another mystery-thriller work out in 2014. The Bleikovat Event, the first volume in The Cairns of Sainctuarie science fiction series, was released in 2012.
"Without question, Hawk is one of the most gifted and imaginative writers I have had the pleasure to represent. His reading fans have something special to look forward to in the Craige Ingram Mystery Series. Intrigue, murder, deception and conspiracy--these are the things that take Hawk's main character, Navy ex-SEAL/part-time private investigator Craige Ingram, from his South Carolina ancestral home of Moccasin Hollow to the dirty backrooms of the nation's capital and across Europe and the Middle East."
Barbara Casey, President
Barbara Casey Literary Agency
www.hawkmackinney.net
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