The Erie Murders

About the Book

Our young detective couple, JC and Susan Shelby, embarks in Chicago on a small ship tour of the Great Lakes, the Erie Canal, Hudson River, and Manhattan. What should have been a much deserved rest from their arduous immediately past adventures turns into a nightmare experience with death at Niagara Falls among other places along their colorful tour route. A large group of fellow passengers, a family of seven from North Dakota celebrating an inheritance with a hopefully pleasant vacation, begin to have some very bad luck – death strikes in a mysterious fashion. JC’s rank as a Navy Lieutenant in Intel service of the US Navy and the Shelby’s past success in solving murder crimes results in their being put on the case by the FBI where they struggle with a series of disappearing suspects. The case finally ends, not in Rhode Island at the end of the cruise where everyone was sure it would, but in Arizona and New York City.

About the Author

Hood is a Physicist, Science teacher, and Lecturer on Jungian Psychology and History of Science. During WWII he served aboard a US destroyer. Subsequent to university he was an aerospace engineer designing optical star trackers for intercontinental air-breathing missiles, scientist at The Scripps Institution of Oceanography, doing research on military camouflage and visibility, and was later head of electro-optics technology work at the Navy’s Electronics Laboratory Center in San Diego developing lasers and fiber optics. He received his PhD in England. After 25 years of Navy service, military and civilian, he joined the faculty of San Diego State University teaching Natural Science and Physics. He was president of the local section of the Optical Society of America and later of the Friends of the Library Board at the University. He taught management and math in the school of business. He has published nine books of fiction, and several technical and academic papers. John has three sons. His wife is now deceased. He continues his writing career from his home of 60 years in the Point Loma district of San Diego, CA.