On either side Newenham airport fell rapidly away from them and Liam’s stomach gave its usual takeoff flip-flop. “She’s going to kill me,” he muttered through clenched teeth. He hadn’t meant to be heard but the headset was a good one and Prince turned her head to stare. “Why would she be mad at you?” The…
Read more “It doesn’t matter if it’s my fault or not. It will be by the time I get there.”
And now here Rebecca was, five months later, waking up in a one-room shack deep in a canyon somewhere between the Wood River Mountains, which together formed part of the southwestern curve of the Alaska Range. The mine sat on a creek in a deep, narrow crevice formed between three mountains four, five and six thousand…
Neither one of them was a pilot, so they chartered Wy Chouinard to fly them into their preferred hunting area, the long, level plateau between the broad plain that sloped down into the Nushagak River on the east and the Wood River Mountains on the west, where a small but fecund herd of caribou fattened…
“Anything else?” “Yeah, the phone was ringing when I walked in the door. Some guy, name of Montgomery, looking for–” “Lyle Montgomery, looking for his daughter,” Liam said with a sigh, and glanced at the calendar. First of September, first of the month. Montgomery was right on schedule. “You know him?” “He’s got a daughter missing. Name of Cheryl.” Liam…
Next up was a zig to Akamanuk, perching precariously on the edge of the Nushagak River two big bends above Newenham. She buzzed the homestead, two buildings, a short airstrip crowded with trees and a tilled rectangle of earth with what looked like a very healthy crop of potatoes. Ted came out and peered skyward. She turned, banked,…
A seven-foot Jayco popup camper perched unsteadily in the back of a Ford F250 truck is not the best of all possible beds for a six-foot-two-inch man. Even sleeping corner to corner, Liam’s feet still stuck over the edge, there was no toilet, no shower and no place to hang his clothes, in particular his…
Liam squinted at her through his one good eye. “You didn’t say Donohoe had somebody with him.” “He didn’t.” Liam sighed and shifted carefully in a tentative attempt to sit upright. His head didn’t fall off so he was more patient than he might have been. “Look, Prince, you’ve obviously discovered some new evidence that…
Read more His head didn’t fall off so he was more patient than he might have been.
In December 2019 I traveled to Egypt to do research for the Eye of Isis novels, which are set in Alexandria in the time of Cleopatra. Remember the paintings from Neferteri’s tomb? These are paintings from the tomb of Sennedjem in Deir-el-Medina. Sennedjem is the artist who painted Nefertari’s tomb. Our guide said the artists…
The window was open and that damn raven was sitting on the branch of a mountain ash right outside the window, looking as if he had been carved from a single piece of the darkest obsidian. Liam didn’t really know anything about obsidian except that it was a rock of some kind that was black…
I loved everything John le Carré ever wrote, and the precision, the clarity, and the elegance of his prose will always be something for other writers to admire and reach for in their own work. I loved the stories written about the writer, too. My favorite was told by someone who was traveling with him…
