July 2019
The Closed Ring
“The Joy is not in the having . . . (but) in figuring out the complicated, dangerous, and exciting ways to get it. In that sense you always have it because the pleasure is in the pursuit.”
—Mary Jackson
“Sweetheart, I lost my trust with my virginity.”
—Krista
He’s at it again. Dr. Jack Barnstone thought he was done with sleuthing after clearing his name of malpractice and murder, but no. . . Now, to help a friend, he sets out to solve another murder by identifying a never-seen-before murder weapon and corralling the perpetrator, part of a drug-pushing crime syndicate known as the Closed Ring. To get the job done he has to dodge the advances of a seductive widow with unclear intensions, accommodate the return of his Hippie Chick lover and her eccentric, mystical friend, work around the San Francisco police and the local political power structure, all the while maintaining sanity and clear purpose.Engaging characters. Intelligent mystery narrative. Add the colorful times during the aftermath of the San Francisco Summer of Love and you have the formula for an evergreen classic.
August 2016
The Lucifer Connection
“Tragic, the epiphany that comes too late.”
—Jack Barnstone
“Optimists make the best cynics.”
—Krista’s dialogue
Jack Barnstone is an outside-the-box, motorcycle-riding physician who, finding himself in two kinds of trouble, leaves Texas to start a solo practice near Chinatown in San Francisco. When a patient walks in his office with an undiagnosed mortal illness Barnstone's life changes forever. Finding himself in deeper trouble than ever he must work his way through a malpractice suit, the mistrust of his colleagues and the suspicions of the San Francisco police in order to vindicate himself. Since he has arrived in San Francisco just at the start of the Summer of Love to pursue his quest he has to learn the inner workings of Hippie culture, the sinister workings of the Satanic Church while he is dodging the unpredictable actions of the San Francisco Police. With help from his new Hippie girlfriend and an old flagrantly gay East Indian assistant coroner he discovers why the case was so difficult to solve, confronts the perpetrator and stumbles upon a well-hidden and sinister web of criminal activity.