At The Cabin

by Garry Rodgers

What monstrous savage viciously attacked Bea Bonnell—inflicting fractures, burns, and excruciating torture on her? And why did he do it? Bea was seventy-four years old, for God’s sake, when this true crime story occurred. Beatrice Bonnell and her husband, Stan Bonnell, spend their winters at the cabin they own on De Courcy Island in the mild southwest coast of British Columbia. Their De Courcy cabin is far south of their second home near Atlin, an equally small place in the cold goldfields of northern Canada’s Yukon Territory. And it’s always safe and secure at the De Courcy cabin—until a masked and armed stranger arrives with a depraved demand and the brutal intent of getting back something extremely valuable. Bea resists, and the barbaric beast works Bea over—breaking her fingers and ribs, repeatedly singeing her side with a red-hot knife, then setting the cabin on fire with Bea blindfolded and hogtied inside. Is there a link between the two cabins—Atlin and De Courcy—bringing on this atrocious assault and putting Bea Bonnell into a life-threatening state where she’ll succumb to horrific wounds? That’s the complex case facing the Serious Crimes Section. Their intricate investigation takes detectives from the wintery waters of the Pacific Northwest to the snow-packed roads of the Klondike where they prove two fundamentals found in solving all crimes. Occam’s razor—when faced with two hypotheses, the simpler one is always correct. The stranger the circumstances, the closer the answer is to home. At The Cabin is Book 8 in the Based-On-True-Crime Series by Garry Rodgers, a retired homicide detective with a second career as a coroner—now reincarnated into an international bestselling crime writer. Go ahead and Look Inside At The Cabin.

169 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 25, 2021

About the author

Garry Rodgers is a retired Royal Canadian Mounted Police serious crimes detective who went on to a second stint doing sudden and unexplained death investigations for the Province of British Columbia Coroners Service. In his younger years, Garry served as a marksman (sniper) on British Special Air Services (SAS) trained RCMP Emergency Response Teams. He's also a recognized expert witness in Canadian courts on the identification and operation of firearms.

In his third reincarnation, Garry Rodgers made #5 bragging rights on the Amazon Best Seller list, sandwiched between the names Stephen King and Dean Koontz with his debut crime thriller novel No Witnesses To Nothing. It’s based on a true story where many believe paranormal intervention occurred. At the moment, Garry is working on a series of books based on true crime cases he was involved in. These are In The Attic, Under The Ground, From The Shadows and Beside The Road. In the works are On The Floor, Between The Bikers, By The Throat, Below The Deck, At The Cabin and Off The Grid.

Garry hosts a popular blog at www.DyingWords.net. The tagline is provoking thoughts on life, death and writing. There are 300+ posts ranging from rants on bureaucratic stupidity to analyzing high-profile death cases. He also blogs at the HuffPost and does ghost-written op-eds. Recently, The Kill Zone gang invited Garry as a regular contributor.

A few non-fictional facts about Garry Rodgers…

~He grew up around the drag strip and was an NHRA ModProd racer.
~He also raced snowmobiles (sleds) for Mercury Marine on the SnoPro circuit.
~He won a mechanical bull riding competition — stayed on 8 seconds at level 8.
~He was struck by lightning and survived to talk about it (that really, really sucked).
~He was bitten by a venomous brown recluse spider while he was innocently writing a book.
~He was thoroughly humiliated by having to karaoke sing You Ain’t Nothing But A Hound Dog.
~He almost killed Neil Young, the rocker. Story goes that Neil was flying over a tree-lined hill crest on his bicycle and Garry nearly bug-squashed him with his Ford Explorer. According to Garry and Neil, it was a close call. Real close.

Outside of crime writing, Garry Rodgers is an old boat skipper. He went to school and took Transport Canada courses, exams and proved sea time to get his 60-Tonne Marine Captain ticket. Garry says, "I’m good-to-go (from a legal point) to run tugs, seiners, small ferries and luxury yachts. However, outside of operating a few touristy whale-watching boats, I don’t drive watercraft commercially. I just love spending time around the Pacific saltwater near my home in Nanaimo on British Columbia’s Vancouver Island at Canada’s beautiful west coast."

Reviews

[Tammy Gailey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Once again, another good read from Garry Rodgers... I have to say for me it was a bit slow going & gold mining doesn't much hold my interest, I was going to give up a couple times but kept going & so glad I did. So if you're like me & want to give up, please don't, because in the end it was a great read.