A Dark Shadow's Kill

A Dark Shadow's Kill is the 11th Jim West mystery/thriller.

Anita Perez cursed herself for not putting on her shoes before coming out to find her cigarettes. She had parked her ancient Dodge Caravan on the mostly gravel parking spot near the back door, but the weeds here in the high plains of New Mexico were nothing if not tenacious. Rather than grab the pack of cigarettes and dash back in, she sat on the driver's seat, doing her best to pull a nasty sand burr out of the sole of her left foot.

While she tugged carefully at the burr, she saw the small trees off to the side of the house light up from the headlights of a vehicle. After a few seconds, she could hear the engine as the vehicle approached the front of the house.

"Not good," Anita said to herself. Both she and Xavier Perkins were trespassing. The small rundown house belonged to the estate of a rancher whose family had not yet decided what to do with it.

She didn't move or do anything for a minute or two. Xavier was a commercial truck driver who routinely stopped in Melrose on his travels. She had met him at the local truck stop over a year ago. Since then, one or two times each month, Anita would pick him up there, and they would go somewhere for the night. She liked Xavier. He was nice to her, and after their initial haggling over the price, he had never tried to jilt her.

Award winning author Bob Doerr grew up in a military family, graduated from the Air Force Academy, and had a career of his own in the Air Force. Bob specialized in criminal investigations and counterintelligence gaining significant insight to the worlds of crime, espionage, and terrorism. His work brought him into close coordination with the security agencies of many countries and filled his mind with the fascinating plots and characters found in his books today. His education credits include a Masters in International Relations from Creighton University. A full-time author with twenty one published books, Bob was selected by the Military Writers Society of America as its Author of the Year for 2013. The Eric Hoffer Awards awarded No One Else to Kill its 2013 first runner up to the grand prize for commercial fiction. Two of his other books were finalists for the Eric Hoffer Award in earlier contests. Loose Ends Kill won the 2011 Silver medal for Fiction/mystery by the Military Writers Society of America. Another Colorado Kill received the same Silver medal in 2012 and the Silver medal for general fiction at the Branson Stars and Flags national book contest in 2012. In addition to Curiosity Can Kill, Bob has written nine prior novels in the Jim West series. Bob lives in Garden Ridge, Texas, with Leigh, his wife of 51 years, and Cinco, their ornery cat.