Literarily Speaking Virtual Book Club Selection: Moonlight Falls by Vincent Zandri – Day 2
Every month, we pick wonderful books we’ve read to spotlight at Literarily Speaking. Today we’re happy to be reading Vincent Zandri’s new thriller novel, Moonlight Falls. Vincent will be with us until Wednesday and will be giving away a copy at the end of his stay. Check back to find out if you’re the winner on Friday.
To become eligible to win, all you have to do is ask a question or leave a comment on all three days. One lucky reader who comments with their email address is put in a pot to win the book. However, they must sign up for our email updates prior to the author’s appearance.
To recap:
- ask a question or leave a comment on all three days
- leave your email address
- sign up for our email updates to the right ——->
That’s all there is to it!
Day Two: Literarily Speaking Book Club Selection: Moonlight Falls by Vincent Zandri
Moonlight Falls is the Albany, New York-based paranoid tale (in the Hitchcock tradition) of former APD Detective turned Private Investigator/Massage Therapist, Richard “Dick” Moonlight, who believes he might be responsible for the brutal slaying by knife of his illicit lover, the beautiful Scarlet Montana. The situation is made all the worse since Scarlet is the wife of Moonlight’s boss, Chief of Detectives Jake Montana.
Why does Moonlight believe he might be responsible?
He’s got a small fragment of a .22 hollow point round buried inside his brain, lodge directly up against his cerebral cortex. The result of a botched suicide attempt four years prior to the novel’s start, an operation to remove the bullt frag would be too dangerous.
But the bullet causes Moonlight lots of problems, the least of which are the occasional memory loss and his rational ability to tell right from wrong. The bullet frag also might shift at any moment, making coma and/or sudden death, a very real possibility.
Still, Moonlight has been trying to get his life together as of late.
But when Scarlet begs him to make the trip over to her house late one rainy Sunday night to issue one of his “massages,” he makes a big mistake by sleeping with her. Later, having passed out in her bed, he will be rudely awakened by a garage door opening and Jake’s unexpected and very drunken homecoming. Making his impromptu escape out a top floor window, Moonlight will seek the safety of his home.
Two hours later however, he will receive another unexpected visit from Jake Montana. This time the big Captain has sobering news to report. He’s discovered his wife’s mutilated body in her own bed. She’s been murdered and now he needs the P.I. to investigate it in association with Albany ’s “overtaxed” Special Independent Unit before I.A. pokes their nose into the affair. Moonlight takes a big step back. Is it possible he made a second trip to the Montana home-sweet-home and just has no recollection of it? Once there, did he perform a heinous crime on his part-time lover? Or is this some kind of set up by his former boss? Is it really Jake who is responsible for Scarlet’s death? Does he wish for Moonlight to cover up his involvement, seal the case before Internal Affairs starts poking their nose into the situation?
There’s another problem too.
Covering Moonlight’s palms and the pads of his fingers are numerous scratches and cuts. Are these defensive wounds? Wounds he received when Scarlet put up a struggle? Or are they offensive wounds? Wounds he couldn’t avoid when making his attack on Scarlet with a blade? The answer is not so simple since Moonlight has no idea where he acquired the wounds.
Having no choice but to take on the mission (if only to cover his own ass), Moonlight can only hope the answers to his many questions point to his former boss and not himself.
Read the excerpt from Chapter 37:
Phillips was taking longer than usual to answer. Or maybe it just
seemed that way under the circumstances.
When he picked up I told him, “Cain changed his mind before
we had the chance to do it for him.”
“Suicide to homicide,” George correctly surmised.
“Is Scarlet’s body still there?” I asked, freshening my whiskey
and downing a quick jolt before posing the question of questions.
“On ice, but not for long. Fitzgerald’s people called. They’re
coming for the body in an hour.”
I looked at the clock on the stove. Two-thirty.
Fitzgerald. The largest funeral home in Albany. The very outfit
that bought Dad out not long before the cancer cut his retirement short.
“Who gave the order?” I inquired.
“Montana, I assume,” he replied. “I guess he must have changed
his mind, because they have her slated for the standard send-off instead
of cremation.”
Jesus, I thought. He doesn’t know.
“Jake’s dead,” I told him. “He went up in flames along with his
house about an hour ago.”
Nothing on the line but dead air. I asked George if he was still
there. He said he was.
In my head, I saw him standing inside a windowless four-walled
room, some Vaughn Williams playing on the stereo. Total isolation. The
way he liked it.
I asked him if he had a copy of Miner’s tox report. He said he
didn’t but that he could get one easily enough just by taking a walk over
to the labs. I told him what the report revealed about the drugs, about
the curare.
“Cain’s right, little brother,” he said. “Murder.”
“In the first degree.”
“What do you want me to do?” he asked.
“A favor. Make that two favors.”
“I’m listening.”
“Hold onto Scarlet for as long as you can. Don’t allow
Fitzgerald’s people or anyone else to pick up her cadaver. Tell them
you’ve still got a couple of postmortem procedures to take care of now
that cremation has been refused.”
“What if they elect to wait inside the lab while I perform these . .
. ah . . . procedures?”
A legitimate question.
“Tell them that you’re backed up. That you won’t be able to get
to her until tomorrow. You’re a local Quincy. Your word carries some
weight around this town. Maybe you can’t go against an order from a top
cop like Montana, but you have the right to at least attempt more tests
on a possible murder victim. Fitzgerald’s people will just have to
understand.”
“Yeah, but will Cain swallow it now that Jake’s dead? What
about that second favor?”
“They deliver Jake to your doorstep, do not, under any
circumstances, sign off on the body before it’s opened up and thoroughly
autopsied. Just like you did to Scarlet.”
“Not gonna be easy with Cain staring me in the face.”
“No matter what he throws at you, you’ve got to hold the line.”
I thought about the curare that Miner found in Scarlet’s blood. I
wondered if it would be discovered in Jake’s blood, too.
“Are we square on all this?”
“I don’t think I’ve been asked to play the strong silent type since
Tet in ‘68,” he said.
“You can stand up to Cain. I have total faith.”
“Faith,” he said. “Don’t see much of that anymore.”
“That’s because it’s about believing in something you cannot see,
feel or prove,” I replied.
“Like the truth.”
“Something Cain doesn’t want you to see.”
Questions:
Q: Give us a brief explanation of what’s happened up to this point.
Vincent Zandri: Jake Montana and his second in command, Mitch Cain, have hired Moonlight as a special investigator into the brutal death of Scarlet Montana. There’s nothing unusual about this, since Montana and Cain are always calling in the financially strapped suicide survivor to “rubber stamp” cases of their choosing. But this case is different. Moonlight now only feels like he might had had something to with her death, he he had real feeling for her. Knowing that because of the partial bullet that’s lodged inside his brain, he could die at any moment, Moonlight decided to investigate the case for real and in doing so, begins to uncover a plot of crooked cops and on top of it, an illegal organ harvesting operation led in part by a group of Russian from the town of Saratoga to the north of Albany. When Cain realizes Moonlight is getting too close to uncovering some serious incriminating evidence, he takes it upon himself to destroy the evidence.
Q: Who is Jake?
Vincent Zandri: Jake Montana is Scarlet’s husband. He’s the Captain of the APD. He wants nothing more than to sweep his wife’s death under the carpet. He, being a drunk who blacks out, also feels that he might have had something to do with his wife’s death, but just can’t remember.
Q: They have found curare in Scarlet’s blood. What exactly is that?
Vincent Zandri: Curare is an incapacitating drug that’s been around for ages. It renders a body paralyzed, almost death-like, while it’s cognitive and sensory abilities remains in tact. Thus, one can be sliced open with a knife and not move a muscle yet be aware of every cut as well as the excruciating pain.
Q: What are Montana’s thoughts during this time?
Vincent Zandri: Jake is troubled. He realizes he neglected his wife for all these years and perhaps resorted to brutal treatment and abuse. Now that’s she’s dead, he misses her. But he also is crooked and he wants to wipe the legal slate clean. He’s a reprehensible man who used to be a good man. And he hates himself bitterly.
Now it’s your turn! Leave a comment below to become eligible to win a free copy of Moonlight Falls on Wednesday. The winner’s name will be posted by Friday, May 7.
Stay tuned tomorrow for Day 3 of Literarily Speaking’s Book Club Selection: Moonlight Falls by Vincent Zandri!
Related posts:
- Literarily Speaking Virtual Book Club Selection: Moonlight Falls by Vincent Zandri – Day 1
- Book Excerpt: Moonlight Falls by Vincent Zandri
- Book Excerpt: Moonlight Falls by Vincent Zandri
- Literarily Speaking’s Virtual Book Club Selection: Hiking Through by Paul V. Stutzman – Day Two
- Literarily Speaking’s Virtual Book Club Selection: Hiking Through by Paul V. Stutzman – Day One
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