Showing results by author "J. Gessler" in All Categories

After the attempted kidnapping of his wife, Ellen, Los Angeles attorney Hugh Kerr realizes the murder case against Daniel Jenkins is inextricably mixed up with his own tortured youth. In order to exonerate his client and clear up the twenty-year old murders of his parents and brother, he must turn to district attorney Bartholomew Bond for help. The idea of laying bare his past is not an easy one, but after confessing some details that link him to the four Canadians who actually perpetrated the crime, the prosecutor agrees to keep his secrets as long as justice is served. Cleverly deducing ...

“Target’d” Summary Never was a ship more aptly named. While on a routine mission to the outer quadrant of the galaxy, the star cruiser Target is struck by an unknown force, immediately killing two-thirds of the crew. Those remaining include Commander Joshua Terry, who assumes command after the death of the captain. Discovering only four of the bridge crew alive and two of those critically wounded, he begins a search of the ship for the remainder of the survivors. Along those few he finds Brian Hardy, the ship’s resident minister and unofficial guru, and Helen Fitzgerald, a language ...

Mr. Harold Poxie, owner of CANS news service, is coming to London. When editor Sweet McGraw threatens to introduce him to Gypsy if Kimbo doesn’t take the unappealing assignment to cover the sudden death of Mr. Goldfinch, the one of the company’s best clients, he reluctantly agrees. Anything to get her away from the old man’s clutches. As anticipated, the funeral is dull and dreary, with few useful quotes to gather for the obituary. One, however, strikes him as odd: the complaint from an elderly woman that the body appears desiccated. Waiting until the mourners have departed, Kimbo ...

“Shepherd of the Kingdom” Shepherd Kingston wanted fame and fortune and when the young photographer found the opportunity to photograph the beautiful and elusive Wall Street wizard, Ericka Elvina, he thought he had discovered his chance. Warned by his friend and mentor, Abraham Trent, a professor of mysticism and the ancient black arts, that Ms. Elvina was not who she seemed to be, Shepherd ignores his “superstitious nonsense” and agrees to accompany her back to the mysterious kingdom apparently unknown to the civilized world. Realizing, to his horror, the kingdom has not progressed...

Life is complicated. No one needed to tell Hugh and Ellen Kerr that the addition of a baby to their family would be simple. Yet, neither could have anticipated the complications. Asking Jack to babysit was the first problem, immeasurably complicated when they lose the services of Mary Wade after Hugh and Lieutenant Wade get into a bitter argument over the way a confession was obtained from an under-aged boy. Distraught over the idea of losing Ellen as his legal assistant and confronted with his belief no child should be prosecuted as an adult, Hugh takes on the case of the youthful murder ...

SUMMARY The Hugh Kerr Mystery Series XXI “The Conundrum of the End of the World” It began as just another missing person's case. Janice Slattery came to the Merrick Detective Agency seeking help in finding her sister, Joyce St. James, who had disappeared a week ago. Tempted to pass it off as just another young woman who arrived in Hollywood seeking fame and fortune and then dropped out of touch to hide her failure, Janice argues this situation is different. Joyce was a dependable bank clerk who had lived in Southern California all her life. It wasn't like her to vanish, although she had...

Racehorses, a miracle cream and murder are inextricably involved as Hugh Kerr is asked to defend the scientist who created a formula capable of healing previously incurable wounds on animals as varied as dogs and thoroughbreds. Although it would appear unlikely that anyone would dispute the value of such a cream, the actual ownership of the formula, its eventual, if any, commercial value, and the wider applications of its use create various factions who find that greed leads to murder as the only solution to the problem. When a prominent thoroughbred breeder who has witnessed the “miracle...

What begins as a routine trip to work turns out to be anything but. Getting caught in traffic occasioned by a bank robbery, Hugh and Ellen Kerr try to backtrack, only to find themselves in an auto accident. While Hugh deals with the repercussions, Ellen spies the four bank robbers exchanging cars in an effort to elude the police. Returning to the scene to report what she saw, Ellen watches as one of the shooting victims, a young clerk, is taken to a waiting ambulance. Her concern over Barry Hutton's fate sets in motion a tragic series of events which leads her to demand Hugh represent the ...

“prioR Battles”After running the Federal blockade and returning to England, Rudy and Rose have three days to spend together before he is compelled to return across the Atlantic. To use that time together in a meaningful way, Rose requests Rudy tell her of his youth. Beginning with the tragic circumstances leading to his expulsion from VMI, his return to Charleston and subsequent disinheritance, he then details for her, in words so vivid she experiences his adventures alongside him, his voyage to San Francisco and foray into the gold fields as a ‘49er. The flashback, seen through the ...

“captains RB”RB XIISummary After completing the task of transferring Rudy’s wartime fortune from French banks to a company Rose has established in Bombay, they are freed from immediate worry. Although Rudy’s health and his repeated denial that he can never again captain a ship continues to worry her, she is determined to prove to his crew that he will again be “the man he was.” Unexpectedly, Rudy provides the means for her to put a plan into action when he purchases a steamboat in her name which he christens the Lady Rose. Making it clear he will not command a steamer from the ...

The explosion came close to killing him, and as Rudy Blake lay on the ground feeling the rest of his life ebb away, he comprehended one of two things would happen. Either he would find Rose Theodore’s lifeless body and join her spirit in the afterworld, or the gods would spare her – and consequently him – because they were not yet done manipulating their favorite plaything. Proving one side stronger, or perhaps simply more willful than the other, it is Rose who saves Rudy. Realizing he has been badly burned and perhaps suffered broken bones from plummeting down the stairs in the ...

Leaving Rose Theodore behind in England to serve as his chandler, Captain Rudy Blake returns to war-torn Richmond. Ordering his crew to wait for him aboard his blockage-running ship Reprobate, he travels to Atlanta where he intends to oversee to his wartime enterprises. During the long and uncomfortable train ride, he falls asleep and is transported back in time to relive his experiences of a year ago. In 1862, Atlanta is a rawboned city desiring to become the center of the Confederacy’s manufacturing and transportation. Already having established himself as a speculator and silent ...

WondRous BackdropsSummary They needed a fresh start; of that neither Rudy Blake nor Rose Theodore disagreed. But where to begin? With the ink still wet on her Master’s papers, Captain R. B. Theodore could have chosen to take the Lady Rose back to sea but an undercurrent of doubt troubled her. The Civil War was over, but reconstruction in the South had not gone the way either had hoped. With a Southerner in the White House, there was every reason to believe reunification meant a return to the Old Ways. Slavery was abolished but the hatreds remained. Northern cotton Factors paid little, if ...

“Ask him about John Paul.” If one sentence stuck in Rose Theodore’s mind, that was it. Innocuous by itself, within those five words lay a world of accusation, charged against Captain Blake not only by the speaker, First Officer D’Artagnan, but held in resentment by the entire crew of the Reprobate. Although the un-Civil War had ended and Rudy returned to England, the horrors of his service in the artillery lingered. Professing “not to be the man I was,” Rose is more than willing to give him the time he needed to recover. Not so the federal agents who have swarmed over England ...

The ReproBate Saga“time and tRouBle”RB XVSummary Time and trouble wait for no man. The time had been set for Rudy Blake’s execution and the Federal authorities in charge of the city knew there would be trouble if the hanging did not take place. The provost-marshal, had been given an assignment: find a charge and make it stick. It was finally decided Blake would be tried for his participation in a duel dating back to 1849 when facing a man on the “Field of Honor” was illegal. The trial had been short and to the point. One month from the day Rudy was found guilty, he was to be taken...

Atlanta has fallen and Rudy Blake has left the city, penniless and without hope. Following in the footsteps of the ragtag Confederate Army, he comes upon an officer and makes the startling announcement he wishes to join up. Proving his prowess with a rifle, he signs his name on the enlistment form and is assigned to the sharpshooters. Here, Private Blake gets his first taste of what war really means: deprivation, fear, loss, death and a despair deeper than any he has ever experienced. After a particularly dispiriting encounter with Federal forces, he is overheard commenting on the lack of ...

Daring. Resourceful. Devil-may-care. Moody. Superstitious. Gambler. Confederate blockade-runner. Captain Rudy Blake was many things to many people, but there was one descriptive word upon which they all agreed. Reprobate. Captain Blake not only reveled in the nickname, he had the audacity to name his ship after himself. The Reprobate. Not a smoke-belching steamer but a swift, sleek four-masted schooner capable of outrunning the Federal gunboats and slipping behind those dangerous, ponderous vessels to deliver what the wealthy citizens of Charleston most sought: luxuries. A man who swore ...

“carRying Battlescars” The tall, gaunt man stood at the door and for a moment, Rose Theodore did not recognize him. Then, with a cry of joy tempered by shock she welcomed home her long-lost wayfarer, Rudy Blake. Civil War had done much to Rudy. Gone was the cocksure reprobate, the captain who had dared run the Federal blockade, the businessman who owned Southern railroads and numerous profit-generating enterprises. In his place was a broken man who had gone for a soldier: a man who served his country but not the Cause; an artillerist who had imbibed too many defeats and seen too much ...

“New Beginnings:Book IV Peas in a Pod” Summary How do you put your life together after an unimaginable tragedy? How to rediscover and restructure your identity? How to find purpose out of chaos? Dr. Robert Kamer is forced to face those questions after the devastating events involving his brother at the Kamer/Jackson Institute. Finding no answers at the K/J I, he flees to the one person in the world who can help him. In so doing, he leaves his partner, Dr. Samuel Jackson, behind to face not only his own personal agonies but the suspicion and distrust of the staff he is compelled to ...

The expression "holy revenge" might seem a misnomer, as it is often believed that vengeance belongs to the Lord. When a race of people were cruelly and habitually enslaved, however, freedom meant more than emancipation: it offered the opportunity to redress wrongs in a more earthly court. The man called "Red" arrived in Hellhole with an aura of trouble surrounding him. Immediately sensing his presence meant bloodshed, Marshal Kiley ordered him out of town but not before allowing him to have his wounds treated by the doctor, Fiz Ward. Even more intuitive than the lawman, Dr. Ward is quick to...