fourdukes@sbcglobal.net

THE MEDALLION - Finished 118,000 words

– Paola Zanuttini, CA - “…I was going to read the rest on the plane... I broke down and read the rest of it.....addictive, like chocolate... I loved it!!!!! I thought you handled all the fallout and closing of the story very well... you had me till the end. I tried to stay away, but I had to read it all.”

Your number one employee, your friend, is murdered. You are the number one suspect and a drug cartel wants you dead.

Often, suspense murder thrillers are staged in the proverbial big city with main characters that are obvious for their part in the mystery. The Medallion is different. It lifts your soul and takes you on a suspense-filled thrill-ride through far west Texas, to the mountains of New Mexico and across the Rio Grande River into Mexico. Very fast-paced, the main characters are unwittingly snatched from their normal lives only to have them changed forever.

Steve Martine is the Creative Director and President of a $200 million advertising agency based in El Paso, Texas, P & M Advertising. It’s a small agency by Dallas, Austin, or New York standards, but the largest in the Southwest none-the-less. In early winter, his best friend and the agency’s new business guru, Elliot Jones is murdered one Saturday morning in the street outside of the agency’s office building in Downtown El Paso. Over the next four days, the humble, but resourceful Steve is framed for the murder of Elliot, the murder of a hit-man and drug dealing; finding himself being hunted by both the police and a drug cartel.

By simply surviving his extreme trials, Steve earns the respect of Detective Stanton and becomes the ultimate thorn in the side of a notorious drug cartel called the Free-Landers.

There is a manhunt, car chase, tractor-trailer chase, intimate fighting and plenty of other explosive action. The character development is intelligent and believable as all of the pieces of the story come together in an exciting twisted conclusion. The reader keeps guessing until the very end and they still want more.