Special Forces

by John M. Williams

Thirtyish and unemployed, Riddle has moved to the town where he has placed his mother in a nursing home. Weighted with bad memories and guilt, he spends his days exploring the rural county with his camera. On one of these excursions he comes upon a deserted club where he sees a ghostly figure. The place itself seems to have been abruptly abandoned some years ago. Investigating later, he learns that a young man disappeared there ten years earlier, and his curiosity begins to draw him into an underworld of killers and drug-cookers run by renegade commando Tig Ledoux, and his assistant Doc. He finds his only ally in Leila, the deep-sighted daughter of a local fortune-teller. Drawn into Ledoux’s employ, he begins to piece together the connection between the disappearance and these dangerous men, and after witnessing first-hand their depravity, finds himself in a lethal kill or—something worse than being killed.

101 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 26, 2011

About the author

I retired from LaGrange College in 2015 and live in LaGrange, Georgia. Currently I serve as a mentor in the Reinhardt University Creative Writing MFA program. I write fiction, non-fiction, plays, essays, and the occasional film script. I was named Georgia Author of the Year for First Novel for "Lake Moon" in 2002. My most recent publication is my novel "End Times," (2023). Other recent publications include "Monroeville and the Stage Production of To Kill a Mockingbird (2023), "Atlanta Music in the 50s, 60s, and 70s: The Magic of Bill Lowery" (with Andy Lee White, 2019), "Village People: Sketches of Auburn" (2016). My and Rheta Grimsley Johnson’s musical play "Hiram: Becoming Hank," about the formative years of Hank Williams, has enjoyed four successful productions, and is scheduled to be produced in fall 2024 in Pass Christian, MS.