Henry Newsome’s Last Case: Murder and Mysticism in the Great White North

After his retirement in 1996 Michael Frederick Clark continues to be active as a published Field Ornithologist, as well as in his work as a pastoral visitor and 3rd World volunteer. A lover of nature and of all things "classical" in the arts, he is also an enthusiastic reader in several fields. In recent years, Mr. Clark has published two works of fiction and two of poetry, all through AuthorHouse, including "GOLDEN YEARS: Three Tales For A Winter's Evening" and the present work (fiction), and "MIXED TIDINGS: Shorter Lyrics And Other Poems" and "SOUNDINGS: A Volume of Longer Poems."

Distraught and aging, Henry Newsome, a retired Chief of Detectives from the St. Louis Police Department, travels north in the late '60's]into Canada to visit with his cousin, Mini Carmichael, who decades before he had asked to be his wife. In the small town of Dunnestun, Ontario, Henry is met by one of the heaviest winter storms on record, and by a tangled web of hideous murders that tests even his skills as an internationally acclaimed forensics expert.

Plagued by a town plunged into a deep winter torpor, a green and conflicted police sergeant, his own issues with advancing age, and his frustrating attempts to reconnect with his much altered cousin, Henry's task is far from easy. Most vexing and problematic is Mini's strange little "nephew," a visionary, who is in some way central to the case.

While the bringing to justice of a brutal and cold-blooded child murderer is the plot's centerpiece, it is only one part of a larger story of deepening intrigue and mystery. As told from the multiple viewpoints of the engaging principal characters, HENRY NEWSOME'S LAST CASE will hold the attentive reader's interest to the very last page.