Duty Strong

For readers of The Lions of Lucerne by Brad Thor and American Assassin by Vince Flynn comes a thrilling mystery that begins with murder, a suspicious cover-up, and Sergeant Major Zinny Zubell’s inability to abandon duty—even when his new civilian life hangs in the balance.

After twenty years of military service, Sergeant Major Zinny Zubell is released from the army as a reduction in force. He travels to North Carolina to discharge his best friend, Major Jack Klinkscales, from a suicide watch at a nearby VA hospital. Zubell wants to help his lifelong friend, who has been severely crippled in combat, adjust to civilian life.

Zubell settles in the up-and-coming city of Charlotte and finds out he doesn’t fit in with the genteel southern culture. A hardheaded man bound by duty, Zubell accepts a temporary assignment working as an investigator for Claude Sedley, the senior partner at a well-established Charlotte law firm. The excitement of a new career is short-lived when it turns out things aren’t what they seem. Zubell becomes suspicious about Sedley’s assignment to trail a local entrepreneur, Damon Slade, without any need-to-know information. His gut tells him both men are masking the truth about a woman’s body that was found in her car at the bottom of a lake.

Zubell persists without pay to investigate a connection that pulls everyone involved into a puzzling conflict. How can he get the attention of the authorities when no one is investigating the deadly accident? Digging for the truth reveals a tangled web of cover-ups that leaves Zubell and Klinkscales right where they don’t want to be―in the middle of the action. Their investigation leads them to a young woman named Silver Kelter, whose shocking revelation about Slade’s violent ways makes Zubell believe his instincts are on target.

Steve Shockley’s interest in creative writing began at the Citadel under the guidance of a dedicated mentor, Professor John Doyle, along with his college friend Pat Conroy. After graduating with honors and commissioned in the Army’s Adjutant Generals Corps, he attended law school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Steve is a broadcasting executive, has an extensive marketing background in national sports publications, and has written and produced industrial films and television commercials. He wrote a two-act play, Hole in the Flow, produced by the NC Playwrights Forum with a regional theater company and staged at a local college. He wrote a sales manual, A Business Scout’s Notebook, based on years of selling ideas and closing accounts. Duty Strong is Steve’s first novel. He lives in Charlotte, North Carolina.