P.J. MacLayne

I’m almost ready to load  this manuscript for The Rise of Jake Hennessey onto the normal sites . . . Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble and Apple, so it will be available everywhere on May 17, only a few days away. While waiting for it to go live, I thought I’d share a quick snippet.

The glare of spotlights cracked through the acrid haze to illuminate what remained of the front of The Purple Onion. Blue and red strobes from emergency vehicles cast eerie patterns on the surrounding buildings. At the end of the block, cordoned off by police tape, a small crowd surveyed the action, analyzing each move of the firefighters and speculating on motives while avoiding the over-spray from fire hoses.

Jake stood planted in a puddle in the middle of the street, as close as the fire marshal allowed him to get, and wished for that tumbler of whiskey to erase the taste of smoke in his throat and ward off the early morning chill. Now that the fire was out, he had nothing to keep him warm except for the anger burning in his heart.

The Rise of Jake Hennessey

Have you seen the book’s description yet? No? Here it is.

For 22 years, semi-retired jewel thief Jake Hennessey honored his promise to stay away from Harmony Duprie. He has no plans to change that… until Special Agent Doan Houck saunters into Jake’s bar, claiming Harmony’s life is in danger.

She’s not the only one in jeopardy. Jake is run over by a motorcycle and is the target of a drive-by shooting. He doesn’t know who to trust. Not the feds Not the local cops.

Not even Harmony.

But Jake will do anything to protect his ex-lover. Even if it means matching wits with an FBI agent, revealing old secrets, or ending up in prison. Again.

If it comes down to saving his life or Harmony’s, there is no choice at all.

This book has been a long time in the making. The seeds for it were planted when I wrote The Marquesa’s Necklace ten some years ago. But I didn’t know that until after I finished writing The Ranger’s Dog Tags, and Jake decided to reveal his secrets. He’s been a fun character to write.

I can’t resist – one more excerpt before I go.  Then join me on the 17th for release day!

Cloaked by the musty curtains of his third hotel room, Jake studied the traffic on the street below. He knew every unmarked car owned by the Oak Grove police, and two of them patrolled the neighborhood. Despite their presence, he’d been unable to determine their encrypted channel on the hacker’s scanner.

He turned away from the window, walked to the bedside table, and poured a second drink from the bottle Danny had left at the front desk. Doc Gabe would be upset with him, but Jake figured he deserved the break from abstinence. The doc had sighed while he studied the damage to Jake’s cast, and muttered something about sending him to a nursing home in Pittsburgh. It had been an empty threat.

Even flirting with Trina and Belinda at the clinic hadn’t eased his restlessness, and Jake paced as he sipped his whiskey. He planned meticulously for his heists, analyzing every contingency, leaving room for changing circumstances. It offered him a sense of control. He craved control. The current situation offered none.

He drained the glass and tilted his head up, letting the harsh liquid burn the back of his throat. A small, black spider wove a web where the wall and ceiling met. Jake had heard rumors about the Feds developing the technology to use robotic insects to bug a room, but not that they could spin silk. It seemed safe to ignore the spider.