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Michael J. Griffin
Michael J. Griffin is an award winning creative writer, novelist, producer, advertising and marketing specialist, educator, and journalist offering freelance copywriting services to help clients better craft their messages and extend their brands.
I have always believed that reading a good story is a splendid way to learn about the human condition, our history, our shared weaknesses and strengths. Stories give nuance, color, texture and clarity to a world that is too often interpreted simply in black and white, good and evil, right and wrong – when the truth actually lurks in the gray areas. A good tale lets us look into other peoples’ souls and, perhaps, find ourselves there as well.
– Michael J. Griffin
Novels
In the darkest corner of Grady Hagen’s attic, wedged behind a rafter, is a picture postcard he kept for more than sixty years as a grim reminder of a heinous crime in which he had participated as a young man. The sepia-toned photo depicts the lynching of Rudy Montcrief, a black man accused of raping a white woman. Grady never told anyone of his involvement in the lynching, even his beloved wife Rachel who passed away almost a year ago, but whose ghost still roams his memory. Now, with his own mortality bearing down on him, he is compelled to go back to Arbutus, Mississippi and somehow pay for his sins.
Clutching the postcard, Hagen returns to a town he long ago abandoned, and a past he could not. He travels with his 22-year old grandson Charlie who has no knowledge of the true purpose of the quest. Through their travels, the events that led to the hanging of Montcrief unfold, revealing a complex web of first love, lost love, friendship, racism and betrayal. What happened in 1942 and what happens on this redemption road are two integral parts of the same story, forever fused by a tragedy of monumental proportions.
Richard Baker awakens from a hallucinatory nightmare in his estranged wife’s Mercedes in the middle of nowhere. The passenger seat is slathered in blood, and the windows and floor are streaked with it. His hands and clothes are also covered. The only sign of Maura Baker is her purse that rests in a coagulated pool on the floor. Rich, still reeling from a ferocious hangover, remembers very little of the party he attended the previous evening at which he may, or may not, have seen his wife. His instincts impel him to flee, but before he can, police surround the car, and he is taken into custody.
Rookie detective Glory Kane with her troubled partner Jake McKay must determine what happened to Maura Baker. To Detective McKay it’s an open and shut case – Rich, a millionaire real estate developer, murdered Maura and disposed of her body to avoid a huge divorce settlement. In fact, some of the evidence supports that conclusion. However, as much as Glory wants to successfully wrap up her first homicide, to her the case has too many loose ends, and she and her partner are in constant conflict.
When a hunchbacked petty crook named Tucker Hines wanders onto the scene with information that just might link Maura’s disappearance to an underworld murder, the case suddenly swerves in an entirely different direction. Bodies begin to pile up, each with a link to the mystery surrounding Maura. The evidence propels Kane and McKay through a series of twists and turns and leads to an astonishing and unexpected conclusion as the two detectives try to discover what really happened on Richard Baker’s last stop before dawn.
Richard Baker awakens from a hallucinatory nightmare in his estranged wife’s Mercedes in the middle of nowhere. The passenger seat is slathered in blood, and the windows and floor are streaked with it. His hands and clothes are also covered. The only sign of Maura Baker is her purse that rests in a coagulated pool on the floor. Rich, still reeling from a ferocious hangover, remembers very little of the party he attended the previous evening at which he may, or may not, have seen his wife. His instincts impel him to flee, but before he can, police surround the car, and he is taken into custody.
Rookie detective Glory Kane with her troubled partner Jake McKay must determine what happened to Maura Baker. To Detective McKay it’s an open and shut case – Rich, a millionaire real estate developer, murdered Maura and disposed of her body to avoid a huge divorce settlement. In fact, some of the evidence supports that conclusion. However, as much as Glory wants to successfully wrap up her first homicide, to her the case has too many loose ends, and she and her partner are in constant conflict.
When a hunchbacked petty crook named Tucker Hines wanders onto the scene with information that just might link Maura’s disappearance to an underworld murder, the case suddenly swerves in an entirely different direction. Bodies begin to pile up, each with a link to the mystery surrounding Maura. The evidence propels Kane and McKay through a series of twists and turns and leads to an astonishing and unexpected conclusion as the two detectives try to discover what really happened on Richard Baker’s last stop before dawn.