"Where's Joe?"

"I don't know!" she said. "I don't know!"

Templeton banged through the left wing of the gate, smashing it aside and feeling it trail the fender, knowing that a piece of it had caught and was dragging. Or maybe it was the long sticks of bamboo. He slid to a stop at the entrance to Cape Road where the noise suddenly stopped.

His hands were shaking on the wheel. Janet was shaking. He looked at the shotgun that lay between them, never used, never once thought of being used, when he heard the voice from the communicator.

"Your friend is hurt," said Cornu. "He's bleeding..."

more excerpts

The wasted body of a young woman is revealed when a sinkhole freakishly erupts on the Sun Coast of Florida.

Relentless homicide detectives, Sgt. Adam Templeton, and his partner, Joe Davey, are faced with a nightmare. With no leads to follow, they grasp at anything; a name whispered over the internet, a dream related by a friend of a missing person. Scattered forensic clues begin to arise from the grave like recovered memories.

Templeton, desperate to bring the killer to justice, reaches deep into the past. The chilling revelations uncovered make for a haunting, teeth-grinding tale!

A Long Way From Eden is planned as the first novel in the Adam Templeton series.

Almost all the characters and events are based on real characters or events. Call it drawing on life, or on research, it comes to the same end. A close observer of the Sun Coast will think that he knows every town and building in the book, but it will still be fiction. It's like any good story: the end should be anticipated but still carry the full impact of surprise.

A Long Way From Eden tries to do that. I hope the people, place, and suspense hold the reader to the end and to the heart.

David Chacko