The Beadle Files: Graveyard Promises

Book excerpt: Graveyard Promises is the first installment of The Beadle Files, a hardboiled suspense series set in the Roaring Twenties. Prohibition is the law of the land. Social and economic fluctuations are sweeping across the country, and organized crime has become a volatile influence—it is the era of gangland infighting for territory and control of the flow of liquor. The main character in the ensemble cast is LC Beadle, a World War I foreign correspondent who is now stateside in Durango, Colorado. Following a lead, the newspaperman gets caught up in a murder mystery that has conspiratorial undercurrents involving the Chicago rackets. Trouble or the threat of it is an ever-present reality leaping off the pages like an aggressive terrier. Schemes and plotlines jump from the Backdoor Vault to Triad Medical to Rooster’s Barnyard to Jewel’s Tea & Spice Emporium to the Kilkenny Social Club. The narrative entwines around the life and times of a legendary lawman and his family. Supernatural elements are woven into the fabric of story arcs as the age-old war between good and evil continues unabated. Despair is at odds with hope while hints of tragedy lurk in the shadows. The words of Yaz Lightfoot, a deeply spiritual Lakota Sioux man, serve as an overarching theme: “Justice demands the fidelity of principled men.”