James Bradberry

THE 32ND OF DECEMBER 

On a snowy New Year’s Eve, former FBI agent Marc Beck returns to the scene of a fatal air crash to mourn his dead wife.  It’s been exactly one year since Liberty Flight 1558 went down atop a West Virginia mountain, an accident that Beck suspects was sabotage.  When Beck loses control of his car near the site, his memory is cleansed of Anna, but also of why the operative of a powerful politician is shadowing him.  His pursuer, a man known only as Anders, appears to come to Beck’s aid, but then puts a gun to his head.  Beck escapes when a Samaritan couple shows at the scene and Anders kills them, a murder for which Beck will become the prime suspect.  As the story unfolds, Beck must stay steps ahead of Anders and authorities, heading east to Washington and the Chesapeake.  He’ll rely on an alluring Dutch journalist and his own tortured mental faculties to probe the crash cover up involving the President-elect.  In the tradition of the Hitchcockian wrong man, Beck has two weeks before the clock strikes midnight, before Gates Sidwell is inaugurated, giving himself full pardon powers over his complicity in a repulsive crime.

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