Henry Newsome's Last Case
Murder and Mysticism in the Great White North
by
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The waitress brought the second coffee - or was it the third? She slid-threw it wearily into the outer reaches of Newsome’s vision, who, munching greedily on the baked apple pie, had his eye fastened rather fiercely on the note.
“Don’t make apple pie like this down in St. Louis,” he managed to mumble. Then he asked sharply:
“Why me?”
He had yet to look Boult straight in the eye: to barely acknowledge his presence, in fact. Through a complete meal which had already dragged on for an hour and a quarter.
Why him indeed! Boult couldn’t help wondering.
He was - or had been - the top man in his field. He had cracked several cases that had left others stymied: and not just in St. Louis. Two of these cases - one in New York, and the other in Chicago - had received sensational press coverage worldwide, and were still considered to be models of forensic methodology. At the time of his retirement he was commended both for his character and his many innovations, now standard practice, in a field that was still finding its way. A highly-praised pioneer, in fact.
Boult had done his research. But at the same time, he was having difficulty reconciling all this to what his eyes clearly beheld sitting across from him at the table.
Despite herself the waitress, looking bored and winter-grim, had lingered at the square, wide-sprung elbow, gazing rather fascinated, or just curious perhaps, at the slow, incessant, totally unconcerned motion of the flabby cheeks. Tirelessly chewing...
But at least a Chief of Detectives - even if retired - was sort of half way in between. It was an old theory - or, in a cynical mood, a prejudice based on solid, inexorable fact - often reawakened by the town’s legal hierarchy. If the law was a total organism, the police were at worst the feet, at best the hands; while the lawyers - the “professionals” - and the judges were the brains and nervous system. But that was as far as an optimist might squeeze it: the reality was an endless game, a farce, in fact. In actuality, the policeman was the “slave” or the automated enforcer: the muscle, in contrast to the “brilliant decision-making” of the higher-up lawyers. Stuck-up imbeciles! (For all he cared, Frazer could go jump...)
Newsome, though, was, in a way, more in the middle; and just maybe -
After all: when it came down to it what else did he have?
“An interesting note!” The big man appeared to shout his way into Boult’s thoughts.
It was perhaps the first time in an hour his cheeks had not been crammed with food.
But now the large napkin must come into play. Of course - he hadn’t counted on that!
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About the Book
After his retirement in 1996 Michael Frederick Clark continues to be active as a published Field Ornithologist, as well as in his work as a pastoral visitor and 3rd World volunteer. A lover of nature and of all things “classical” in the arts, he is also an enthusiastic reader in several fields. In recent years, Mr. Clark has published two works of fiction and two of poetry, all through AuthorHouse, including GOLDEN YEARS: Three Tales For A Winter’s Evening and the present work (fiction), and MIXED TIDINGS: Shorter Lyrics And Other Poems and SOUNDINGS: A Volume of Longer Poems.
Distraught and aging, Henry Newsome, a retired Chief of Detectives from the St. Louis Police Department, travels north [in the late ‘60's]into Canada to visit with his cousin, Mini Carmichael, who decades before he had asked to be his wife. In the small town of Dunnestun, Ontario, Henry is met by one of the heaviest winter storms on record, and by a tangled web of hideous murders that tests even his skills as an internationally acclaimed forensics expert.
Plagued by a town plunged into a deep winter torpor, a green and conflicted police sergeant, his own issues with advancing age, and his frustrating attempts to reconnect with his much altered cousin, Henry’s task is far from easy. Most vexing and problematic is Mini’s strange little “nephew”, a visionary, who is in some way central to the case.
While the bringing to justice of a brutal and cold-blooded child murderer is the plot’s centerpiece, it is only one part of a larger story of deepening intrigue and mystery. As told from the multiple viewpoints of the engaging principal characters, HENRY NEWSOME’S LAST CASE will hold the attentive reader’s interest to the very last page.
About the Author
After his retirement in 1996 Michael Frederick Clark continues to be active as a published Field Ornithologist, as well as in his work as a pastoral visitor and 3rd World volunteer. A lover of nature and of all things “classical” in the arts, he is also an enthusiastic reader in several fields. In recent years, Mr. Clark has published two works of fiction and two of poetry, all through AuthorHouse, including GOLDEN YEARS: Three Tales For A Winter’s Evening and the present work (fiction), and MIXED TIDINGS: Shorter Lyrics And Other Poems and SOUNDINGS: A Volume of Longer Poems.
Mr. Clark is a graduate in philosophy from the University of St. Michael’s College (Toronto), and taught High School English for over thirty years. A near-lifelong resident of Dundas, Ontario, he has been happily married for over four decades and has two fine adult sons.