The 32nd of December — James Bradberry

On New Year's Eve, ex-FBI Agent Marc Beck returns to the site of a fatal air crash atop a West Virginia mountain to mourn his dead wife. When he loses control of his car in a snowstorm, his memory is cleansed of Anna, but also of why the operative of a powerful US politician is shadowing him. His pursuer, a man known only as Anders, at first comes to Beck's aid, but then puts a gun to his head. Beck escapes when a Samaritan couple shows at the scene and Anders kills them, a murder for which Beck will become a suspect. As the story unfolds, Beck stays just steps ahead of Anders and authorities, heading east to Washington and the Chesapeake. He'll rely on an alluring Dutch journalist and his own tortured mental faculties, to probe a cover up involving the President-elect. In the tradition of the Hitchcockian wrong man, Beck has two weeks to clear his name and find the truth. Two weeks before the clock runs out and Gates Sidwell is inaugurated, giving himself full pardon powers over his complicity in a repulsive crime.


About the Author: James Bradberry is an award-winning architect and author of three novels. A former Fulbright Fellow and Lusk Scholar, he studied architecture and architectural history at Auburn, Penn, and Cambridge, and later taught at a half dozen architecture schools in the US and Canada. His mystery novels, The Seventh Sacrament, Ruins of Civility, and Eakins' Mistress, were published in US by St. Martin's Press, and all received critical acclaim, including starred reviews in Publishers Weekly. The books are still in print in Europe, under the aegis of Polillo Editore and Hachette Livre. In addition to his novels, Mr. Bradberry has written fiction, reviews, and articles for The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Architect, The American Library Association Journal, The Darwinian, and Domus. Bradberry lives in Philadelphia.