I am delighted to be taking part in the Blog Tour to celebrate the publication on 14th March of Bob Kroll's latest novel, The Hell of it All. This is the second book in his TJ Peterson series. The publisher, ECW Press, has released excerpts from the book and I am able to share one of them with you today. But first, a little about the book...
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Retired detective T.J. Peterson is working the table scraps that his former partner, Danny Little, sometimes throws his way. One of them has Peterson hearing from a snitch about a body buried 30 years ago, the same time a drug kingpin went MIA. Peterson is also ducking an ex-con with a grudge, a hitman who likes playing jack-in-the-box with a 12 gauge. Then a former lover re-enters Peterson’s life and begs him to find her daughter, an addict who knows too much about the local drug trade for her own safety. The search for the girl and the truth about the 30-year-old corpse takes Peterson down into the hell of it all, deep into the underworld of crack houses, contract killing, money laundering, and crooked professionals doubling down on their investments of black money.
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The Hell of It All by Bob Kroll
Excerpt 4: Books, Life & Everything
Sunday, March 12
Chapter One (cont’d)
“There could be thirty, forty, maybe a hundred campsites in the park. You want us to dig up every one on your say-so?”
Turtle squirmed. He picked up the helmet from the snowmobile seat and put it back down. “The body’s for real,” he said. “I heard them talking.”
“But you’re not telling who you heard. Here’s the thing, Turtle, it’s not a meat sandwich if you leave out the meat.”
Turtle’s face went through ten shapes of anxiety. Then he said, “It stays with you, right?”
“Me and Danny.”
“You and Danny, but nobody else.”
“Cross my heart and hope to die.”
“The hell with you and that kid stuff.”
“Just tell me what you got.”
“I heard Willie Blackwood say something to this other guy. I don’t know who. I never got a good look.”
“Where was that?”
“Willie has a camp upcountry, and he was there with his snowmobile pals.”
“Not your kind of company. What are you doing there?”
“I’m not riding with them. I show an hour later. They have me packing the blow, so if they get stopped on the highway, they’re clean. Then one of the machines goes down, and I’m outside pulling spark plugs and cleaning them. That’s when I heard Willie talking.”
“You heard what, exactly?”
“The guy said, ‘We do the fucker and dump him where he can’t be found.’ Then Willie said, ‘Try a campground.’ He said, ‘Who walks a campground looking for a grave?’ The guy left and Willie said to that friend of his, you know, big fucking nose, Willie’s muscle, the one they call Come On . . .”
“Cameron,” Peterson said.
“Yeah. Willie said to him about burying one in Laurie Park thirty years ago. Nothing but bones now. Like a place that nobody finds.”
“And that’s all Willie said?”
“Yeah.”
“When was this?”
“The day after it snowed.”
“Two weeks and you’re bringing it now?”
“I ain’t the fucking mailman.”
Peterson thought about it a moment. “Tell me more about the rag asses. Strictly low level?”
“Dollar store.”
“They’ve got nothing to do with the body in the park?”
“You going deaf or something? The rag asses don’t mean shit.”
“You think Willie knows the campsite number?”
“How do I know what Willie knows? If he put it there he knows. But that ain’t something he goes around talking about. And we don’t shack together. If the man talks in his sleep, I ain’t going there, I ain’t hearing it.”
Excerpted from The Hell of It All by Bob Kroll. © 2017 by Bob Kroll. All rights reserved. Published by ECW Press Ltd. www.ecwpress.com
About the Author
Bob Kroll has been a professional writer for more than 35 years. His work includes books, stage plays, radio dramas, TV documentaries, and historical docu-dramas for museums. The Hell of It All is the second novel in a projected trilogy featuring T.J. Peterson. Kroll lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Visit Bob Kroll’s website to learn more about him.
Thanks to Tania Blokhuis and the publishers ECW Press for the place on the Blog Tour.
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