True Self

"True Self" is a crime story told in the first person of a Detective Sharon Hayes, "Styx" to her loved ones, and just "Hayes" for everyone else. There aren't a lot of people who call her "Styx".

Hayes has a knack for investigating and solving crime. She gets "hunches". Her "hunches" are uncanny instincts that usually lead to some break-through in an investigation. Her record of successfully concluding investigations in the Central Bronx Precinct's Vice Squad has just earned her a transfer to the Homicide Squad, a challenge she dives into on her very first case: the murder of Juan Julio Santiago, a female impersonator and recovering alcoholic.

Hayes' instincts quickly lead her to discovering that there are ten ostensibly unrelated murders which are, in fact, related to each other. She is able to convince the squad and its Lieutenant, Dave Speers, that each of the murders appears to be different because they are actually scripted for a series of pornographic "snuff" films. She works with an exceptionally experienced team to run down leads and build a strong case which upholds her theory - while being threatened by an anonymous correspondent and knocked around and sexually assaulted by her own husband.

Hayes is complicated.

The story culminates in her abduction by the very people she is investigating. She is close to becoming a star in her own "snuff" recording when she receives help from an old friend...and a new one.

Her troubles are not over, however, as she experiences more threats while she is in the hospital recovering from her trauma. As these experiences take her between life and death, we get a glimpse of the world she returns to between lives. It is a blissful garden of delights, at least until the moment where she is hauled back to her place and time by the talented medical team resuscitating her.

"True Self" is a story of motives and outcomes. Or "Cause and Effect", if you prefer. It is one distinct story contained in the larger reality of reincarnations. It is a story frozen in a single location and time amongst universes of such. It is a story that provokes thought. Contemplation. Perhaps a shift in beliefs.

Jude LaHaye enjoyed a career spanning twenty-five years before ever turning his hand to writing. He worked hard - always putting in extra hours and effort - as an Army and then a DoD Logistician, blaming his "day job" for his inability to become a writer.

And then he got his chance: he jumped on an opportunity for an early retirement from civil service.

It was hard. That first book took him almost two years, at the end of which he questioned his life-long ambition to become an author.

But it also broke something loose: after struggling over that first book, he now writes fluidly, finishing as many as three books in any given year.

LaHaye lives a solitary life, preferring his own company to that of others, living and creating predominately in his head - and then putting many of those ideas down on paper to become the backbones of his novels.

He has a wife, Liz, who is as extroverted as he is introverted. She is his inspiration for some of his more outgoing and optimistic characters.

His four children are all as different from one another as they can be, providing yet more inspiration for good, bad - or simply weird.

LaHaye and his family live on an island in Washington State on the Puget Sound, where they enjoy fauna, flora, and majestic views of forests, mountains, and ocean.