Devil's Brew

by Keith M. Spence

Keith Spence's powerful debut novel concerns David Jourbet, a penetration agent for the CIA with a very big problem: he's just gunned down the Agency's chief of counterintelligence in cold blood. Fort Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary awaits. A life sentence for murder.

Then he's offered a way out. A simple deal, really. Help the Agency locate a missing operative and all charges will be dropped. Just like that.

Except this isn't just any agent who's gone missing. It's Marlena Cory, David's lifelong love, a woman he jilted at the altar two years earlier.

Before the mystery of Marlena's disappearance can be solved, David must return to the scene of some of some of his most traumatic childhood memories, battling demons both past and present, real and imagined.

And through it all, he will find himself plunging deeper and deeper into a spiritual and emotional Hell that makes a lifetime at Leavenworth seem like an inviting alternative.

333 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 31, 2001

About the author

Keith M. Spence spent years chasing down facts as a legal investigator and solving problems under car hoods, skills that translate surprisingly well to plotting thrillers. His critically acclaimed novels have earned Speak Up Talk Radio's prestigious international Firebird Book Award and the Literary Titan Gold Book Award, establishing him as a rising voice in thriller and suspense fiction.

When he's not running his auto repair shop in North Carolina, Keith crafts the kind of tightly wound thrillers that would make Alistair MacLean, Bill Granger, and Adam Hall proud. An English major who took the scenic route to publication, he writes because he can't help himself. Even when his characters dig in their heels and refuse to follow the outline, he keeps going.

He lives in eastern North Carolina with his family, his cat Callie, and enough books beside his favorite chair to constitute a fire hazard.