Black Widower

Derek Skotadi is a dirty cop. And everyone knows it…

The problem is, he covers his tracks well and everyone is too afraid of him to talk.

Then Skotadi’s wife Jennifer goes missing and Detective Jimmy Parisi and his partner Doc Gibron, are not going to let it go.

But even without a body, they start to tail Skotadi, determined to bring him down.

Leonard Tare has not had it easy.

A veteran of Vietnam, he lives in a swamp in Louisiana, hunting alligators for a living.

One night he slices one open and a head comes out. Afraid of the cops, he puts it in his freezer.

But then a mist starts forming on his dock each night at midnight, and he knows the mist is trying to give him a message.

He calls the police and the head of Derek Skotadi’s wife is found.

Still, the mist remains…

Although Jennifer has only been gone a few months, Derek has already moved his new girlfriend Carrie into his house.

One morning she feels a presence in the bedroom, a mist that envelops her, and is so scared she moves back to her own place.

Derek thinks she’s crazy, until it happens to him.

Something, someone, is in the bathroom, where Jennifer died.

Derek decides to hire someone to burn his house down, but when the fire doesn’t take, Derek sets out for revenge.

As Parisi and Gibron investigate, Leonard Tare learns Skotadi’s name and decides to avenge the Lady in the Lake, as she is now called.

Meanwhile, the once invincible Skotadi starts to fall apart…

Set in the mean streets of Chicago and the intense heat of Louisiana, Black Widower is a story of good versus evil, of man and beasts and of how love makes it all worthwhile.

Praise for Thomas Laird

‘Although Anglin’s supposed connection with the Kennedy assassination becomes clear early on, Laird keeps the suspense churning as leads fall apart.’ – Publishers Weekly

‘More tightly knit than his even more grisly debut.’ – Kirkus Reviews

‘It’s always good to get in at the start of something major. And I think that Lieutenant Jimmy Parisi… could be very major indeed. The publishers have come up with a winner here’ - Mark Timlin, Independent

Thomas Laird has several short stories published in US literary magazines and a collection of short fiction called Blue Collar and Other Stories , also published in the US. He teaches creative writing, literature and composition in central Illinois.