Read an excerpt from, The Demon Dragonfly & the Burning Wheel


Chapter 1: The Body at the Desk

Port Arthur, Ontario, Canada, August 22, 1936:

Lightning stabbed the dark sky. Thunder kicked silence in the head.  Clouds flew up like a black wall over the harbour at Lake Superior. The gunmetal water was all churned up like a colossal head of beer by the east wind off the Gitchee Gumee. It was going to rain. Like the Flood, with that wind driving that rain on the city like a big bucket of water tossed on a sleeping drunk. Anybody stupid enough to be outside was cruising to get soaked.

    I was outside, all right, but I had other things to think about.

    In the lightning flashes, I could see the tall Nazi a few yards away, aiming the business end of a Luger right at my heart. He was smiling. Me, I was in the ripped-up roof of a grain elevator, hanging from a wooden cross-brace--a piece of wood I could hardly wrap my arms around, let alone grab with my hands. The wood was coated with creosote. Damned slippery stuff. And it was about to get a lot slipperier. With a hundred foot drop into the innards of the grain elevator to look forward to when I finally let go. I tried not to think about that—