Today is the day…
Today is the day!
My new novel, The Search for Julia Garcia, has been released!
The novel takes its reader to the Finger Lakes Region in Upstate New York, where a college girl disappeared …
The Search for Julia Garcia is a sequel to my last novel, A Cold Case. This time, however, PI Frank Harris has a very different task. He is hired to find a college student who vanished at Seneca Lake. Frank Harris with an office in Manhattan in Upstate New York? That is not his natural territory. However, as it turns out, he is closer to the Finger Lakes region than the reader of A Cold Case suspected. This is the area where he grew up. The new novel expands the hero’s background in two ways. On the one hand, the narrative explores his family background. The new case gives him a strong reason to return to his hometown and renew his contact with his sister and her family, on the other, the plot emphasizes his relationship with the other members of his firm, especially with Tom, his younger partner, and a new intern with a degree in computer science who builds up a research department. In short, the novel shows Frank Harris and his firm in transition from traditional methods, including Frank’s little black notebook, to the digital reality with new forms of research that he does not even like very much. Both the return to his family roots and the exposure to a rapidly changing reality become a serious test that sometimes pushes him to his limits. While he learns to deal with these changes, success becomes more difficult, particularly in upstate New York which initially appears to be a less challenging world. What initially looks like a straightforward case, becomes a complicated and dangerous task, since the difference between a peaceful countryside and the dangerous city turns out to be misleading.
Will there be another case for Frank Harris? I am convinced of that. It will build on The Search for Julia Garcia but expand the action. There will be more of the local, including stressful family conflicts, but also more international problems. I anticipate that Frank will have to return to Europe to solve his next case. Who will hire him and what will he be asked to do? A local museum? It could be a precious object, either a book or a painting. I will keep you posted.
