Showing results for "John Brooks" in Historical Fiction

Business lately has been deadly for Ike Kelly. Recent unexpected gunplay has left his agency to a single operative. John Henry Cole is that operative. Kelly has received a letter from former lover Lydia Winslow, who operates an escort service in the new mining camp of Deadwood in Dakota Territory. "Three young women have been murdered since they arrived in camp." It is obviously a dangerous assignment, and Cole is advised that he must take every precaution - as if he needed such advice.

John Henry Cole is an operative of Ike Kelly's Detective Agency, based out of Cheyenne, Wyoming Territory. Returning to Cheyenne from what had been a deadly assignment in Deadwood, Dakota Territory, Cole has decided that he has no alternative but to resign from the agency and pursue a different line of work. However, in Cheyenne, Cole learns that Ike Kelly has been murdered and his body burned in a fire that destroyed both the agency office and the shop next door.

The winter around Cheyenne, Wyoming, is devastating, killing both people and livestock. John Henry Cole lives three miles out of town on his small ranch, where he waits out the storm that is quickly killing his cattle and horses. Everything he owns is dying before his eyes, and there isn't anything he can do about it. His dreams of a settled life are as dead as everything else. He knows it's time to move on, and move on he does - but not in the direction he expected.

John Henry Cole, working as a deputy US marshal out of Judge Isaac Parker's court in Fort Smith, Arkansas, was on assignment in the Indian Nations when he was shot and seriously injured. Now, 15 years later, employed as a deputy for Judge Roy Bean in Texas, Cole receives a personal summons from Judge Parker to appear in his court within 30 days. Cole isn't inclined to go, but he knows whatever's on Judge Parker's mind is serious and decides he has to go.

It's Christmas time in Madison, Wisconsin. It is the early stages of the Iraq War, which has conjured up memories for a bread man raised by a Vietnam Vet. If that weren’t enough to bring back these unwanted memories, his boss at the Bread Depot is an ex-Master Gunnery Marine Drill Sergeant who served in the Gulf War. On Christmas Eve, his father calls to tell him that he has cancer, and that he has Agent Orange. Depressed and suffering from insomnia, can he come to grips with his past, and heal the wounds that haunt him?

The two protagonists in John A. Bercaw's new adventure, a warrant officer and a second lieutenant, don't comprehend the full extent of the peril awaiting them when their helicopter crashes into the jungle of Vietnam. All the warrant officer had to do was fly a few newly assigned officers on a tour over their area of operations. It was an easy mission, and he didn't anticipate the enemy shooting down the helicopter and killing most of the passengers and crew.