One for Another

One for Another

Hennessey Reed doesn't go looking for trouble. But trouble has an unsettling habit of coming looking for her.
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Shout-outs

"Jacka richly evokes frontier life while delivering an engaging whodunnit that likely leaves readers wanting more of Hennessey Reed."
Craig Sisterson
Southern Cross Crime

Synopsis

***Shortlisted 2019 Ngaio Marsh Awards Best First Novel***

Bordello madam Hennessey Reed suspects even the combined magic of laudanum and Irish whiskey will not soothe her distress. The girl lying violated on the undertaker's table will remain dead, her wounds horrifying, inexplicable, and reminiscent of Indian sacrifice.

Hennessey treasures the uneasy peace she has found in the remote town of Melancholy, in 1880s Idaho Territory. However, when three more young girls are discovered she recognizes one of the victims and her hard-won equilibrium is compromised.

She decides U.S. Marshal Rafael Cooper requires her help to search for the killer but acknowledges, if consulted, he may not necessarily agree. Nevertheless, with her Bowie strapped to her calf, and wolfhound Raven at her side Hennessey sets out to investigate—a one-woman stampede.

Book 1 in the Hennessey Reed mystery series.

Release date: June 2, 2018

Publisher: Red River Pony Publishing

Print pages: 283

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Behind the book

To this day I have no clue why, after years of voracious reading, I decided to actually write a book, let alone one set in a different country, in a different century. Since a kid I have loved reading about The Old West, so I grasped this bright idea to write a Western/Mystery and away I galloped.
   Certain threads came easily. From the get-go I knew where my protagonist lived (Idaho), that she was a feisty woman who enjoyed a drink (read alcoholic), and there would be a series of murders my laudenum-addicated, whiskey-soaked  heroine would be compelled to investigate.
   Although there are multitude printed resources and online sites available - I lost days perusing - I chose to mix the real and imagined.
   On the real side research of the flora and fauna of the approximate area where the story begins provided a base. A trip through Nevada, Utah and Idaho with a good friend was fascinating for this Kiwi, and they are states I shall return to with pleasure.
   On the imagined side the town of Melancholy where my protagonist, Hennessey, lives is fictional, my aim to invoke a sense of place and a feeling of the times, but to imbibe some of the characters with a twist of the unusual. Melancholy, along with the majority of places mentioned in One For Another, is a conglomeration of towns in a hundred, if not a thousand far-flung locations.
 

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