The California Gold Rush, both the first and second one, had inflicted almost as much damage as the bounty. Stream channels where the Diggers fished had been disturbed or re-routed and blasting had da...
We lived —or rather had lived —in a society which had come to view the father as almost superfluous. But people of common sense knew better. For a boy growing up, it was someone who could show him how...
Night had fallen on Manta by the time we awoke and a cooling breeze was rustling the palm fronds of the tree outside our window. We could hear laughter below as the nightlife of Manta got underway. Gi...
It was the adventure which had called to his soul. All those years riding across open country as he hunted down the men who’d killed his parents was not so easily forgotten. He loved the feel of the o...
When she smiled she got these wonderful little crinkles at the corners of her mouth, and there were faint traces of lines at the corners of her pretty eyes. They were beauty lines, the kind a woman st...
It isn’t easy to look inconspicuous doing a stakeout in an Aston Martin Vanquish, but it’s easier in Monaco and Monte Carlo than just about anywhere else, and so far, no one seemed to give me a second...
They had robbed banks and trains for the most part in their journey westward. More than one posse had taken out after them, but none had returned with any of the Taggart men. One posse tracking them f...
It was wonderful strolling hand-in-hand in an unfamiliar city, in a country that wasn’t ours. Even if that city was Sydney. It lent us a special kind of privacy only those who have travelled understan...
It isn't like in books where the detective gets conked on the head, wakes up and keeps going another 48 hours straight. Exhaustion dulls the senses, impairs the brain and slows down the reflexes. Reac...
I knew Laura wasn’t home this morning, so there was no possibility of her hearing the shot and rushing over to help, placing herself in mortal danger. Which she would have gladly done, because that’s...
The river in his dreams was changing course once more when a sound caused him to roll to his right and come up with his Colt, ready for trouble. His movement was quick, a blur in the darkness; he had...
Mary was stretched out on the lounge by the pool reading Agatha Christie’s new book, Dumb Witness, which a friend had sent her from England. I was reading Erich Maria Remarque’s sadly beautiful, Three...
Two weeks can seem like two years when people are in love, and no one had ever been in love the way we were in love. Or so we thought, of course, as all true lovers do. But when you wake up in paradis...
It was after midnight by a mile when I slid off the bar stool at O’Malley’s and began to walk home. O’Malley’s is an old Irish pub and though I wasn’t Irish, nor did I drink like a lot of other newspa...
You rarely saw the celebs protesting anything of substance. The Glades weren't a sexy enough cause, but give the latest blonde-haired twenty-something who'd just hit it big on TV six or seven horn-tai...
If you've ever watched Andy Griffith, you'll find Geraldine vaguely familiar. She reminds everybody of Aunt Bee. Her size, her sort of scatterbrained reasoning, her sweet manner, and above all, her ab...
Doral used to be swampland, but now Carnival Cruise Lines and one of the major Miami papers makes it their home. Everyone who knows Florida well enough calls it Doralzula because so many Venezuelans l...
There was something different about Andy, though. He wasn’t so much soft, as just sensitive. He felt things and dwelled on them and then he couldn’t get the images out of his head.
But they weren’t just bodies, they were people. People who’d awoken this Saturday morning with hopes and dreams; dreams of getting promoted and moving upstate to the country; hopes of having children...
I'm happy you like me too, Johnny. Oh, I like you, I just don't trust you.