Today as I began reading a new book, Secrets of the Dead (Ambrose Lincoln Series book 1), by Caleb Pirtle III, I realized how much I liked his clean, crisp style of writing and decided to spotlight him on my blog.
About Caleb:
Caleb Pirtle III began his career writing about history and travel. He learned quickly, however, that what happens is never as important as those who make it happen. Many of those people have made their way into his novels. Pirtle is the author of more than 70 published books, including his newest noir suspense Ambrose Lincoln series, which I'm spotlighting today.
He earned a journalism degree from The University of Texas and became the first student at the university to win the national William Randolph Hearst Award for feature writing. As a reporter for the Forth Worth Star-Telegram, Pirtle received both the Texas Headliner's and Associated Press Awards. He served as travel editor for Southern Living Magazine, and his travel writing was given the National Discover America Award three times. For more than two decades, Pirtle was editorial director for a custom publishing company in Dallas.
Caleb has written three teleplays for network television, including "Gambler 5: Playing for Keeps," a mini-series for CBS and "The Texas Rangers" for John Milius and TNT. Because of the success of the CBS mini-series, Pirtle was asked to write two novels, Jokers Are Wild and Dead Man's Hand for Berkeley. His blogs appear regularly on http://venturegalleries.com.
Now that we know a bit about Caleb, let's discover a little more through the first book in his Ambrose Lincoln series -
Secrets of The Dead
Blurb:
Ambrose Lincoln is one of the government's prized operatives, a trained assassin, a man whose past is continually erased by mind control tactics and shock treatments. His days have no meaning. He no longer fears death. As far as he is concerned, a man without a memory is a man who's already dead.
From Germany come rumors of a mad man threatening to rule Europe and maybe the world. On the Night of Broken Glass, his brown shirts and storm troopers move into Baden-Baden and begin their methodical termination of the Jews.
In America, so far away, the violence is nothing more than a protest over a Jewish boy who murdered a German diplomat because the Third Reich had removed and maybe killed his family. It is simply a case of vandalism that got out of hand. No one is concerned, and the American government wants to keep it that way. No one in Washington wants to go to war with Hitler, and President Roosevelt continues to preach neutrality. But word is leaked that one Jewish photographer took pictures of the rampage of brutality and murder that night. He was killed, but his daughter is in hiding with the film.
Ambrose Lincoln is dispatched to Baden-Baden with one charge. Find the film and bring it back. It will tell the truth. It will uncover the lies. The photographs will reveal to the world the sadistic threat that exists for everyone if Hitler's mad march isn't stopped. His mission is to uncover the deadly secrets that his own government doesn't want him to find, secrets that can change history.
Reader review:
5 stars from Jackie Taylor Zortman - A Magnificent Work!
The very first line of this historical fiction novel grabbed my attention and the rest of the book kept me fascinated. Caleb Pirtle III writes a magnificent story illustrating man's atrocities to man in Germany and the political unrest it was creating in America just prior to WWII. Ambrose Lincoln's adventures and his elusive, but often deadly behavior speaks of a tortured soul that no longer has control of his own life, through he functions beautifully in particular areas when necessary. There is humor, horror and heart break in this book, softened often by love. Just a few pages before the end, I was delighted and surprised to find a second, very similar sentence to the opening and captivating one of this book. I am an avid reader and this may very well be the best novel I've read in a really long time.
*** There are four books so far in this series, all available at Amazon:
Secrets of the Dead - book 1
Conspiracy of Lies - book 2
Night Side of Dark - book 3
Place of Skulls - book 4
You can follow Caleb Pirtle III here:
Venture Galleries
Goodreads
Amazon Author Page
