Cooper's Moon
- Publisher: Gulf Shore Press
- Release Date: May 14, 2018
- Formats: eBook & Print
“It was August when our seven-year-old son went missing. On a Tuesday morning in Muskingum, Ohio, trees still green under the punishing late summer sun.”
And so, Cooper’s Moon begins. While teaching philosophy at a small college in central Ohio, Cooper’s seven-year-old son, Maxie, is kidnapped, an event that would eventually destroy his marriage, his career, and his mental well-being, taking him from a rural, mid-western town into southeast Florida and into the vicious world of child prostitution, gangs, and church treachery.
The novel begins with a random shooting in the streets of south Miami where a young boy is killed. Cooper, now a homicide detective with the Miami Police Department, is called to the scene with his partner, Detective Anthony DeFelice. Caught in a shootout with gangbangers, Cooper is wounded and is taken to the hospital. He will remember one of the bangers in a later gunfight in Miami’s Gangland. Two weeks later, now recovered from his gunshot wounds, Cooper is called out to investigate the death of a twelve-year-old boy, Ethan Miller, whose body was found in a cemetery in south Miami. Soon after the murder, a teenage girl’s body is found in a cemetery in Oceanside, a small city to the south of Miami. This leads Cooper to believe there might be a connection.
Reviews
"Mr. Conrath has taken us into the hideous world of human trafficking. Innocent kids are for sale via an international marketplace where their abductors compete for goods for which there is an insatiable demand. Is the seminary a cover operation? Who’s ultimately pulling the strings?
"The strength of the book lies in the author’s vivid descriptions of place. We travel with him through various Florida communities, following every twist in the road and seeing every landmark...The closing chapters present the pursuit by Cooper and his comrades across coastal water to overtake the traffickers’ boat. These high-tension passages rival similar stretches found in Randy Wayne White’s novels in which effective boat handling and knowledge of waterways is raised to an art form, and elevated prose is raised to poetry.
"If you like vigorous adventure blended with high-profile issues, this book — and most likely the series — is for you."
— Phil Jason, Reviewer, Fort Myers Florida Weekly
Excerpt
Copyright © 2018 Richard Conrath
— All Rights Reserved --