This is hardboiled Southern.
All. Day. Long.
Book 1: Nashville Trade
It’s 1976, and Jackson Trade has his own problems. He��s been back from Vietnam long enough to get divorced, get fired, and crawl into the bottom of a bourbon bottle. So when a grieving father asks him to find out why his murdered daughter stopped calling home, Jackson agrees to look into it. It's a question without an answer, and any answer will do. Easy money, right?
But as he noses around the edges of the closed case, he finds a mix of bad assumptions and mistaken identity, together with another murder that has a neighborhood afraid for its children. Before he knows it, Jackson is in a race to catch a killer where no one is looking.
Can Jackson stop his own downward spiral before another killing turns Music City into Murder City? Or will a craven killer walk away, free to murder again?
Book 2: One Trade Too Many
Jobless and battling PTSD brought on by Vietnam, Jackson Trade is drifting through 1977 one bourbon at a time, never more than one nightmare away from a bender. But when a band of undergraduates affixes the face and hands of Mickey Mouse on the campus clock tower, it gets his attention. That’s because his estranged brother turns up just in time to be the only suspect when one of the pranksters is found dead.
Suddenly tasked with sniffing out a crafty killer, Jackson travels a twisting path that links the tower to the myth of lost Confederate gold. And as he tracks the killer and the century-old mystery simultaneously, he sets in motion a series of events that will either lead to justice or to destruction.
No matter which happens, nothing less than his brother’s freedom depends on getting it right. And even if he gets it right, will he have to make One Trade Too Many?
Book 3: Even Trade
Still without steady employment, still living too hard and fast, Jackson Trade seems to have finally caught a break. He’s been hired by the University to monitor a growing protest movement on campus and in the city.
But when Jackson’s friend, local activist and amateur blackmailer, Tippy Taylor, leaves Jackson five grand and the goods on the people he’s blackmailing, Jackson���s instinct is to keep the string going. That’s because Taylor was murdered, and one of them probably did it.
Suddenly Jackson has too much on his plate, and the stakes are impossibly high. One murder lead after another turns into a dead end, while the protests are building to a two-day flashpoint that has an entire city on edge. Jackson will have to make a choice. Rise to the occasion and do both jobs right, or sink back into the Nashville night.
He knows which path is easier. He knows which one is right. But is it an Even Trade?
Genre: Mystery
All. Day. Long.
Book 1: Nashville Trade
It’s 1976, and Jackson Trade has his own problems. He��s been back from Vietnam long enough to get divorced, get fired, and crawl into the bottom of a bourbon bottle. So when a grieving father asks him to find out why his murdered daughter stopped calling home, Jackson agrees to look into it. It's a question without an answer, and any answer will do. Easy money, right?
But as he noses around the edges of the closed case, he finds a mix of bad assumptions and mistaken identity, together with another murder that has a neighborhood afraid for its children. Before he knows it, Jackson is in a race to catch a killer where no one is looking.
Can Jackson stop his own downward spiral before another killing turns Music City into Murder City? Or will a craven killer walk away, free to murder again?
Book 2: One Trade Too Many
Jobless and battling PTSD brought on by Vietnam, Jackson Trade is drifting through 1977 one bourbon at a time, never more than one nightmare away from a bender. But when a band of undergraduates affixes the face and hands of Mickey Mouse on the campus clock tower, it gets his attention. That’s because his estranged brother turns up just in time to be the only suspect when one of the pranksters is found dead.
Suddenly tasked with sniffing out a crafty killer, Jackson travels a twisting path that links the tower to the myth of lost Confederate gold. And as he tracks the killer and the century-old mystery simultaneously, he sets in motion a series of events that will either lead to justice or to destruction.
No matter which happens, nothing less than his brother’s freedom depends on getting it right. And even if he gets it right, will he have to make One Trade Too Many?
Book 3: Even Trade
Still without steady employment, still living too hard and fast, Jackson Trade seems to have finally caught a break. He’s been hired by the University to monitor a growing protest movement on campus and in the city.
But when Jackson’s friend, local activist and amateur blackmailer, Tippy Taylor, leaves Jackson five grand and the goods on the people he’s blackmailing, Jackson���s instinct is to keep the string going. That’s because Taylor was murdered, and one of them probably did it.
Suddenly Jackson has too much on his plate, and the stakes are impossibly high. One murder lead after another turns into a dead end, while the protests are building to a two-day flashpoint that has an entire city on edge. Jackson will have to make a choice. Rise to the occasion and do both jobs right, or sink back into the Nashville night.
He knows which path is easier. He knows which one is right. But is it an Even Trade?
Genre: Mystery
Used availability for TJ Arant's Jackson Trade: Books 1-3