TouchPoint Press takes on Jack Martin’s Alphonso Clay Civil War Mystery Series starting with Treason on the Mississippi!
Jack Martin designs and constructs an intricate web of events extrapolated from in-depth research of Civil War memorabilia, journals, photos, and correspondence. Although this a fictional account of the months before and the time during the Battle of Vicksburg, the characters and information are very much real.
The John Brown depicted is not the infamous Brown who ignited the War Against the States but a former Boston detective who solved a gruesome child murder case which caught the eye of Abe Lincoln, appointing him to U.S. Grants battalion. Brown uncovers treason at the highest levels of the Union Army. He sends for the one person who can help him with the investigation, Cpt. Alphonso Clay. But before Clay could meet with Brown, Brown is assassinated. Now it is up to Cpt. Clay to decipher Brown’s cryptic notes and follow his deductive instincts to solve the murder, unveil the traitors, and ensure the Union’s victory at Vicksburg, a decisive battle of the war.
Clay is a unique character; his lineage a contaminated mesh of human and ‘other-worldly,’ giving him special gifts and talents — super-human eyesight, hearing, speed, and other abilities. With the death of the one person whom he ever loved, Arabella Lot, he puts himself in repeatedly dangerous situations, volunteering for the most horrendous assignments, hoping for death to come… and to be given the chance to kill the one responsible for Arabella’s demise.
After receiving his Juris Doctorate from UCLA, he worked for The Department of Defense and the aerospace industry, specializing in contracts and regulatory issues. Tracing his Californian ancestry all the way back to the 1830s, Martin developed a passion for American history and the mystery genre. With encouragement and support from his beloved wife Sonia, he began writing The Alphonso Clay Mysteries. Sonia passed away on Christmas Eve 2009, following a brave battle against ovarian cancer. He promised her he would finish the books and become a published author. The series includes: Treason on the Mississippi, The Siege of Knoxville, Murder on the March, Murder by Plague, and Assassination at Willard’s. His latest novel, Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? (Amphorae Publishing), picks up with Clay in the late 1920s. Destroyer of Worlds is next in the series. Clay lives on…
Published by TouchPoint Press Represented by Loiacono Literary Agency