Curse of the Ancients

by Hawk MacKinney 

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GENRE: Mystery/Suspense

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BLURB:

As Craige Ingram climbed the stairs of the derelict building, that peculiar stench of a dead body hit him. It was the same smell no matter where—SpecOps SEAL encounter gone sour, or in a vacant, roach-infested apartment. Inside, his SEAL buddy-turned head of Buckingham Parish Homicide’s Investigative Support Division, Grayson MacGerald, was huddled with the coroner next to a swollen decaying corpse that was days old and hardly more than oozing dead meat. The PI inside Craige had a gut feeling that there was more to this than a dead body, and Craige’s Grannie always told him, “Trust your feelin’s.” But that was before Mihály Keaulescu set down two of his Black Falcon choppers on Craige’s Moccasin Hollow private airstrip in an uninvited stopover. It got worse. From his airstrip to Israel, to Turkey and a nightmare-dream of one-of-a-kind ancient artifacts that not only threatened the serene life Craige knew and loved at Moccasin Hollow, it would destroy the world.

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EXCERPT

The smell got worse as Craige made his way up the stairs. Like the smell of burning human flesh, a fermenting corpse gave off one of those distinctive odors one never forgot. Craige thought of the adage about it taking a strong stomach to work with a body that had been dead for a while. One never got used to it. Some memories weren’t pleasant—time on storm-swept beaches, digging for supplies buried in the sand, hidden under piles of rubbish, in dark alleys or trashed rat-ridden warehouses; huddled in black dark caves or stinking tunnels. Their Special Mission CTU team cocked and loaded for anything; prepared to deal out any necessary parcel of maimed, butchered and dismembered—or running for their lives the few times their cover was blown.

As Craige climbed to the second-floor landing, the smell went from bad to a sour-worse. He spotted familiar faces from the department’s forensic team; intent and focused around the pulpy lump with swollen pumpkin dimples where eyes should have been in one very bloated dead body. The corpse was well beyond the initial stages of being recycled. It no longer looked human after cooking several days in the sweltering oven of a Dixie mid-August scorching summer in this dreary one-flight walkup of apartments with no AC and painted-shut windows. The dreary apartment was busier than it’d been in years with lab and forensic techs bustling and sorting the pitiful pieces of the when and how of abandoned death. Near the peeling paint archway into a worse kitchenette he spotted Gray huddled with just over five feet plus, roly-poly Coroner-Medical Examiner Fred Dinkins.

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

With postgraduate degrees and faculty positions at several medical universities, Hawk MacKinney has taught graduate courses in both the United States and Jerusalem. In addition to his work in classrooms and laboratories, he has written numerous professional articles on chordate neuroembryology and authored several novels that reflect his southwest upbringing in Arkansas, Texas and Oklahoma. Moccasin Trace, a historical novel nominated for both the prestigious Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction and the Writers Notes Book Award, details the family bloodlines of his protagonist in the Moccasin Hollow Mystery Series. Hidden Vault of Secrets and Westobou Gold, Books 1 and 2 in the series, have received national and international attention. Hawk is also writing a science fiction series, The Cairns of Sainctuarie.

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiAGlgQQsMQ&feature=youtu.be

Website: http://hawkmackinney.net

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Curse-Ancents-Moccasin-Hollow-Mystery/dp/0997096268/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_2

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GIVEAWAY INFORMATION

Hawk will be awarding a $20 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

a Rafflecopter giveaway