Suspenseful political mystery starts when a sunbelt governor attacks Nostalgia City theme park.
The Woke
and the Dead
Nostalgia
City Mysteries Book 5
by Mark S.
Bacon
Genre
Mystery, Suspense
The Governor vs. Theme Park = Murder
A public war between a governor and a theme park lights the fuse on a story of hate groups, murder, corruption, racism, and political espionage.
Ex-cop turned theme-park cab driver Lyle Deming finds the
body of a park visitor during an LGBTQ event. The dead man catered gay
weddings. Was it a hate crime?
Arizona governor Rod Gudgel—running for re-election—calls it a random shooting. He mocks Nostalgia City theme park for its inclusiveness, uses homophobic and racial slurs, and later challenges the safety of its rides.
When park employees demonstrating for gay rights are killed and injured, Kate Sorensen, the park’s 6’-2½” public affairs VP, slams Gudgel’s unsympathetic response. Lyle searches for shooting suspects and finds himself too close to an armed hate group while Kate digs into the governor’s past, unearthing an impossible trail of malfeasance and enraging Gudgel allies.
Kate and Lyle run into plenty of blind alleys, deception, and dead ends, as they hurry to take down the governor and help the FBI solve hate crimes.
With Lyle’s wry humor and Kate’s unflappability the story moves quickly as puzzles and subplots multiply and loop together threatening the park, their relationship, and their lives.
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The Woke and the Dead
CHAPTER 12
April 5
Kate heard popping sounds and almost simultaneous screams. Bullets crashed through picket signs, crashed through windows, crashed through flesh.
Seconds before, she’d passed a line of gay rights demonstrators marching in front of Governor Gudgel’s new Polk campaign headquarters. When Kate walked into the office, the shooting began.
She dropped to the floor as the storefront picture window shattered and a coffee machine at the back of the room exploded. Somewhere in Kate’s mind, terror mixed with split-second knowledge that the prospect of being shot by a lunatic with an assault weapon had become part of American life. Would this be her final thought?
The shots continued rapidly, pop, pop, pop, one after another. Then stopped.
Kate stayed glued to the floor, along with the half dozen office workers. She listened. Sounds eerily similar to moans from the theme park’s zombie ride drifted in through the broken window. More than a minute without gunfire passed before she dared to raise up on hands and knees, keeping her head low. A man in the corner held his arm, attempting to staunch the blood that soaked his sleeve. Kate’s first impulse was to crawl over to him, but two other people, crouching low, inched to him with towels to stop the bleeding. After another frozen minute, a siren.
When a chorus of sirens sounded, Kate raised up enough to peer through the splintered window out to the street. A sheriff’s car skidded to a stop. Its doors flew open. Two deputies, one armed with a semi-automatic rifle, jumped out and scanned the surrounding buildings. Across the street more black and whites arrived. Uniformed officers dashed up and down the opposite sidewalk.
An ambulance braked to a stop. EMTs leaped out carrying gear. Kate stood up and took tentative steps to the door, her senses on hair-trigger alert.
She stepped outside, gagged, and turned away. Three of the LGBTQ picketers and a sheriff’s deputy lay on the ground, surrounded by blood.
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Mark S. Bacon
began his career as a Southern California newspaper police reporter, one of his
crime stories becoming key evidence in a murder case that spanned decades.
Before
turning to fiction, Bacon wrote business books, one of which was printed in four languages and three editions
and named best business book of the year by the Library Journal. His articles
have appeared in the Washington Post, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Denver Post, San
Antonio Express News, and many other publications. Most recently he was a
correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle.
Death in
Nostalgia City, the first in his five-book series, was recommended by the
American Library Association. Desert Kill Switch, the second series book, was
the top fiction winner in the 2018 Great Southwest Book Festival.
Bacon gets
some of his ideas from experience as a police reporter and also from his work
as a copywriter for Knott’s Berry Farm theme park. He taught university
journalism in California and Nevada and is trying to teach his golden retriever
to stop pulling the leash.
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