Author: Stefan Kanfer
File Size: 399 KB
Print Length: 177 pages
Publisher: StoneThread Publishing (June 1, 2013)
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
eBook only
Book Description:
Jordan is relaxing in the Miami sun, an Inuit thawing out after a tough New York winter. One afternoon he drops by a shooting range; maintaining skills is a part of being a Navy SEAL even when he’s enjoying an extended break. The owner, Tito Sanchez, watches with awe as Jordan fires with an accuracy and speed Tito’s never seen before.
Jordan meets the boozy Niven Moorhead, a colorful former foreign correspondent and full-time alcoholic, who alludes to a plot that could threaten American security. Later Niven’s body is found on the outskirts of Lemon City, which some call Little Haiti. He was slain in a bloody, ritualistic manner. The official report called it a voodoo rite, and the papers and TV news run with it.
Among those who doubt the official story are members of the resentful Haitian-American community. The most articulate objector is Claudette Basile, a singer in Savanette, a popular nightclub. She gives investigators a hard time when they question her after a gig. Jordan is at a nearby table, and he strikes up a conversation when the cops depart.
Idgie Says:
A fun, fast "whodunit" read that has a detective with a different quirk - he's an Eskimo. Some of his talents and skills are definitely different from what you usually see in a detective novel. It's a pleasant change not to have the usual "hardbitten bitter detective on the edge of retirement" protagonist. There's a nice group of interesting characters and an interestingly scary twist filled with Hoodoo, animal sacrifice and the like. _____________________________________
In
this piece for Dew on the Kudzu, Stefan Kanfer, author of The Eskimo
Hunts in New York and The Eskimo Hunts in Miami, shares why he decided
to write about the Inuits.
America’s
earliest settlers were extraordinarily inventive people—none more so
than the Inuits, Yupiks et. al.,known in earlier times by the umbrella
term of Eskimo. Armed with little more than driftwood and bone weapons,
and often at great risk to their lives, they became nonpareil hunters
and even whalers, always respectful to the animals they were forced to
kill in order to survive. They invented the kayak, the toboggan, the
parka and many other devices and garments for thriving in a climate that
regularly hits 30 degrees below zero.
It
occurred to me that an Inuit thrust into the modern world, partly by
his own volition—an Alaska University scholarship winner, then recruited
to be a Navy SEAL—would be an ideal protagonist. The centerpiece of my
Jordan Gulok novels is intrepid, inventive, canny, but also
well-educated and knowledgeable about the ways of the world. Thus he
straddles two societies, the one in which he grew up, the other in which
he operates as a free-lance soldier, cut loose (by Pentagon design)
from the SEALS, so that he can operate on his own, and give them
plausible deniability if things go wrong.
Which, of course, they do during various operations. In The Eskimo Hunts in New York,
Jordan handles a severe winter with ease. The Inuit grew up in worse
weather than this; when the police are rendered helpless, he moves with
grace and determination, bringing down an international ring dealing
with contraband—and toxic—pharmaceuticals. This part was not fiction;
illegitimate “medicines” have been made in Russia, the Far East and even
the U.S., then peddled on five continents as panaceas for diseases they
cannot cure, or even alleviate.
__________________________________
Stefan Kanfer has made a name for himself writing bestselling biographies of such show business icons as Lucille Ball, Marlon Brando, Humphrey Bogart and Groucho Marx. Now he returns to fiction writing with his latest release, THE ESKIMO HUNTS IN NEW YORK, an eBook original that marks the beginning of a series starring Jordan Gulok, an Inuit and a former Navy SEAL.