On Monday (9/11) I have once again have the opportunity to spend time with friend and radio host Georjean Trinkle on her internet radio show Hot in Hunterdon.
Her show is on from 4 to 5 p.m. Mondays. Here’s the link:
http://www.hunterdonchamberradio.com/hot.htm.
We’ll be talking about the Frank Nagler mystery series published by Imzadi Publishing, THE SWAMPS OF JERSEY, A GAME CALLED DEAD, and the new one, released in April, THE WEIGHT OF LIVING.
We’ll also talk about the works-in-progress in the series, a prequel, called so far, JUST COME HOME, and the one after WEIGHT, yet untitled.
The challenge of writing this series has been to create a lead character, Ironton, N.J., detective Frank Nagler, who can hold a reader’s interest, and to create a setting, the City of Ironton, whose conditions, and ebbs and flows, present a compelling tapestry upon which to cast the action.
Georjean has suggested that I read a couple short selections. I’m game.
We may even talk about storms.
With the knowledge that friends and in-laws have been affected by both Harvey and Irma, it was a storm that kicked off the opening of THE SWAMPS OF JERSEY.:
“He had not seen the sky for days, felt the heat of the sun, wore dry shoes or walked outside without that raincoat since the storm blew in and sealed the hills above the city with a dense smothering grayness, a swirling menace of thunder clouds and shrieking winds that pounded the city with an apocalyptic rain that sent the Baptist preachers howling to the hills about sin and damnation. It emptied the grocery store shelves of everything but a few cans of cream of mushroom soup, and locked the residents in the top floors of their homes as the river crashed its banks, flooded streets and rearranged the city landscape like a madman with an earth mover.
The placid, blue August sky had been replaced by rain that came and stayed. Rain with menace, rain that pulsed around corners dark with dislodged pieces of the earth as it ripped away every weak thing it could; rain that claimed, rain soulless and dark as evil; that challenged knowledge; rain that took possession.
The ancients knew what to do with rain like this, he thought wickedly, squinting into the horizontal blast of water.
Conjure an honest man with a ship and spin a parable about the wages of sin. Nagler laughed sourly. And then get out of town.”
The Frank Nagler books are available at the following New Jersey libraries:
Mountainside; Morris County Library; Somerset County Library System; Bernardsville Public Library; Hunterdon County Public Library; Mount Olive Public Library; Phillipsburg; Warren County, Franklin branch; Mount Arlington; Wharton; Dover; Hackettstown; Clark, Parsippany and the Ramsey library, as part of the Bergen County Cooperative Library System; The Palmer (Pa.) Branch of the Easton Public Library; Deptford Free Public Library and Franklin Township Library (Gloucester Co.), New Providence Memorial Library.
The Frank Nagler mysteries are available online at:
Amazon: http://goo.gl/hVQIII
Kobo: https://goo.gl/bgLH6v
NOOK: http://goo.gl/WnQjtr
