Bright and Yellow, Hard and Cold

The search for elusive goals consumes three men...McKinney, a forensic scientist, struggles with his deep, personal need to find the truth behind the evidence he investigates, even while the system shuts him out. Can he get justice for a wrongfully accused man while juggling life with a new girlfriend and a precocious teenage daughter? Delroy gives up the hardscrabble life on his family's Kentucky farm and ventures to the rough-and-tumble world of 1930s Chicago. Unable to find work, he reluctantly throws his hat in with the bank-robbing gangsters Alvin Karpis and Freddie Barker. Can he provide for his fiery young wife without risking his own life? Gilbert is obsessed with the search for a cache of gold, hidden for nearly eighty years. As his hunt escalates he finds himself willing to use ever more extreme measures to attain his goal...including kidnapping, torture and murder. Can he find the one person still left who will lead him to the glittering treasure? And will the trail of corpses he leaves behind include McKinney? Part contemporary thriller, part historical novel, and part love story, Bright and Yellow, Hard and Cold masterfully weaves a tale of conflicted scientific ethics, economic hardship, and criminal frenzy, tempered with the redemption of family love. Named one of five finalists by Shelf Unbound magazine for Best Indie Book 2013. &quote;This beautifully structured first novel reads like the work of a seasoned pro...Ostensibly, the hero of this tale is Sean McKinney, the forensic scientist...but it is Delroy who is the heart of this multi-level thriller. Delroy's experiences in the Depression's hobo jungles contrast great hardship with great compassion, and the pages describing the camps' desperate inhabitants are reminiscent of Steinbeck.&quote; -Mystery Scene