Boise Montague, Book 3

Noir Crime/Murder Mystery

Date Published: December 12, 2023

Publisher: Acorn Publishing

Three bodies. One suspect. Zero time.

After his girlfriend ditches him at a concert, private investigator Boise Montague makes the latest bad mistake in a long line of them. Only this time, instead of waking up with a hangover and some woman he doesn’t know, he wakes up with a hangover on a Caribbean beach, along with three women.

All of whom are dead.

With the dead women’s blood all over his clothes, no memory of what happened, and no way for Boise to explain it, the cops and the prosecutors think it’s a slam dunk. Boise knows he didn’t do it, but no one’s willing to listen—so he’ll have to find the killer himself.

But whoever said the truth will set you free never saw anything like this. The people behind it are powerful, careful…and they want Boise out of the picture for good.

Soon, Boise will face not only present danger, but past pain, because the deeper he digs, the more skeletons he finds. And some of those skeletons are his own. But will he finally bury them—and the past—or will those skeletons bury him instead?

Perfect for lovers of Agatha Christi, Michael Connelly, and Richard Stark, bestselling author Gene Desrochers’ third book in the hardboiled Boise Montague mystery noir series will take you on an adventure into the dark side of crime, the darker side of memory, and the danger that comes to anyone who ventures into a Crime Paradise. Get your copy now!

Excerpt

Chapter 1

A couple wandered into Bob’s Store, where I’d been working to make extra cash. They selected a pair of matching two-dollar t-shirts from the large wooden bin fronting a wall of souvenirs adorned with “St. Thomas, Virgin Islands”.

“See ya, Wendel,” I yelled. “Heading out.” I checked back on the couple. The husband was busy admiring his wife’s tits as she held the t-shirt over her bikini top.

Wendel appeared from behind rows of boxes where he kept a table to examine his latest estate sales purchases. Tuffs of charcoal hair appeared all over his body and head like puffs of smoke expelling from pinpricks in his mottled brown skin. He sounded annoyed. “Leaving so soon, Boise? Thought I had you till five.”

“Reggae concert, remember?”

He scratched his scraggly head and burped. The couple’s perfect smiles faltered momentarily, then reappeared like a nasty case of the clap.

“Right, right. Don’t get too plastered, dude. I need you tomorrow. I gotta head down to Sub Base for a delivery.”

***

I hitched a ride in the back of a pickup headed east. From the cab, an old man and his wife smiled over their shoulders as I clambered into the truck bed. His arm draped over her shoulders.

Through the open rear window, I asked, “How long you two been married?”

“Forty-three years,” the woman said, beaming.

As I jostled around, I tried to imagine my wife’s smile. My wife’s breasts. Both were getting harder to remember. It didn’t matter. If she hadn’t died, we’d be divorced. Either way, marriage was a Rube Goldberg Machine. Complicated. Pointless. Evelyn had been my first and last.

The couple dropped me off in front of the concert tent. “Have a blessed time at the show,” the woman chimed. She had close-cropped hair and freckles like my mother.

Patrice had not wanted me to marry Evelyn. To her credit, my mother never said, “I warned you,” even after we found out Evelyn had cheated. Maybe it was because my wife had been killed the same day.

Yarey patted me on the back.

“What you thinking about?” she asked over the boom of the band.

Nice girl. Fun. Uncomplicated. Not interested in marriage … I presumed. We met on my last case, bonding over common trauma. Bad fathers. Hers a little worse than mine … maybe.

Yarey hummed along to the music. Perfect pitch. She wasn’t a lead singer though. But, she loved it and wanted being a singer, even if she wound up being a back-up, forever in the shadows. I didn’t love anything the way she loved singing.

“Nothing. Just zoning out to the music.”

She shot me a skeptical glance, then continued humming along until the song ended. People danced on clouds of smoke.

Evelyn and I smoked weed sometimes. She hadn’t liked reggae, but she tolerated my music, supported my interest with a birthday concert each year. She preferred Celine Dion and Anita Baker. I should have known something wasn’t right. My mother liked Celine, too.

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About the Author

Growing up in an 18-room guesthouse/wartime hospital in the Caribbean isn’t for everyone, but it proved just the right atmosphere for bestselling author Gene Desrochers to hone a sense of story, mystery, and scene that would prove critical in his writing career. Born on a tiny dot called “St. Thomas” (somewhere in the Caribbean), Desrochers migrated steadily west over the years until he found a home – with a wife who loves him, kids who are young enough to still think he’s pretty cool, and a cat who tolerates him – in the continental United States. He also found the time to earn a JD and become a practicing lawyer, run a tennis club, and publish award-winning short fiction in publications across the US and beyond. Now settled in the mysterious and exotic land known as Los Angeles, Desrochers splits his time between the loves of his life: his family, his writing, his tennis, and his ability to impress strangers with his St. Thomian accent. Find out more about him – and the worlds he creates – at his website, GeneDesrochers.com

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