The Half-Life of Carson Hood

Without a Sound or a Trace
Former Marine Carson Hood is a paradox—a loner who pretends to enjoy a crowded room, a boater who’s scared of bridges, and a peaceful man who’s killed with his bare hands. With new love Claire Markham, his life on St. Simons Island is a dream . . . until, under century-old oaks in his family cemetery, Carson finds someone buried in his grave.
As the mystery unravels, the truth dives deeper, and Carson and Claire soon learn they have stumbled onto a deep-secret government plan known as the Janus Project which will allow America to assassinate her enemies without a sound or a trace.
On the West Coast, wealthy Hispanic entrepreneur Rafael Quinterro has turned against America for reasons personal, political and cultural. He blames the country’s first female president, both for his wife’s murder and for America’s abhorrent treatment of his people, and he'll stop at nothing for the ultimate revenge . . . assassination. A former Janus Project researcher running from the law has been "recruited" to make it happen.
This Sunday on the oceanfront patio of the Barrier Island Club, President Ann Chambers will address the most powerful media owners in the world and do something no president before ever had the courage to try. The Secret Service has prepared more than ever. It’s not enough, and Carson knows it.
As the clock counts down to the second the president will step into the crosshairs of the weapon, Carson gets another surprise—his new love Claire knows more than she's telling.
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Author’s note: Research included interviews with a U.S. Secret Service agent who had just completed four years on the Presidential Protective Detail, and a Los Alamos-trained Ph.D. who provided technical support to fictionalize a piece of modern medical equipment into an assassination weapon capable of killing without a sound or a trace. The weapon may be too close to reality—no one in healthcare, the U.S. government or the military’s R&D agency DARPA would discuss it with me. Not one word.

Chuck Carter is an editor, publisher and PR agent who has been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Japanese-American Economic Review, and his News Releases have been translated into foreign languages in Europe, South America, Africa, the Middle East, and the Pacific Rim. PR Clients and subjects include Microsoft, Compaq, Dominion Semiconductor, Honda, E-Z-GO Textron, Bridgestone/Firestone, Sony of Latin America, the Chicago Bears, Mitsubishi Polysilicon, Imagyn International, 7-Eleven Corporation, NGK Ceramics, and National Science Center. And for PR clients such as these, he earned free placements in The New York Times, Newsweek, The Philadelphia Enquirer, Better Homes and Gardens, Consumers Digest, American Health, Modern Medicine and Reuters-Global. U.S. Government clients include the Atomic Energy Commission, Transportation Security Administration, Federal Law Enforcement Training Center and Department of Homeland Security. While he was editor and publisher of a west coast Florida newspaper, voter participation in covered precincts was twice that of the rest of the city. And a New York television special he promoted generated such a response, the outsourced call center's phone system crashed. The Half-Life of Carson Hood is his first novel.