Lightning Caused

by Roger Lynn Howell

Overview

Acting Sheriff Ada Reed comes across an entire family dead in their home in the aftermath of a raging forest fire. It appears they just sat down and let the flames consume them. They weren't drunk, nor were they dead before it overtook them. Their car was gassed up, yet they didn't flee. Another man dies, and although his death was caused by a semi-truck, there are subtle similarities. Each case could have been accidental, but in each case enemies had been made of dangerous men. When a third illogical death is discovered, Ada is left with three probable murders and three stubbornly imperfect suspects. But the State Patrol sergeant thinks he has the killer-a former special-forces soldier with "Asian skills." When Ada discovers the link between the victims and the soldier's time at the Minidoka Japanese internment camp, she fears the state cop might be right.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781684921898
Publisher:	Coffeetown Press
Publication date:	10/08/2024
Pages:	260
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.65(d)

About the Author

Roger Howell was raised in a loosely knit working-class and often not-much-working-to-be-had-class family in numerous towns in Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington. Stories around campfires and wood stoves told of brawling uncles, lost gold mines, and friends and family who had gone away-to war, to jail, or to start somewhere better. Those stories made the years of the forties and fifties seem to Roger a lost romantic age. And it is. America then was suddenly safe and prosperous, but frozen with paranoia over atomic bombs and flying saucers. A good and innocent people thought they would save the world, but along the way sowed deep prejudices they didn't yet understand. In any case, all those romantic tales of friends and family seemed to happen just before Howell happened along. As a consequence, the midcentury years have always tempted him, so that his own stories, even after four universities and an international career as a geologist and engineer, tend to be of the small towns of the Northwest and of the time and the simple folks who only just preceded him.