Gordon Kirkland

Crossbow

Award-winning author and humorist Gordon Kirkland, has taken his innate sense of humor and combined it with his love for a good mystery to create Crossbow. The resulting novel is best described as marriage between Fargo and the darker passages of the Old Testament. Someone is killing the residents of a small Kansas town. Although the victims appear to have been randomly chosen, the killer has, in fact, decided that they must die for biblical transgressions he believes they have committed. Among the first to be slain is the County Sherriff, leaving two deputies to try to solve the case before the killer can achieve his ultimate goal of wiping what he sees as "Gomorrah on the high prairie" off the map, once and for all. The deputies are far from seasoned police professionals. Dave Simmons, the senior of the two, is doing his best to improve by learning new police techniques. He'd like to bring geographic profiling to the department, but a serious impediment to that goal is his propensity to get lost whenever he gets behind the wheel of his police cruiser. Chuck Wilson the other deputy would like to be a police dog handler. Unfortunately, the County cannot afford a properly trained police dog, so he is trying to make do with Duke, his own Springer Spaniel, a dog with an intelligence quotient just slightly lower than the average head of cabbage. Added to the mix is a missing romance author who arrived in town to interview the first murder victim just before his death, an ambitious small town newspaper reporter who gets her leads across the pillow from the junior deputy, and the grieving father of one of the victims. Just as it seems that the case has been solved with an explosive conclusion, the deputies learn that the killer was not acting alone, and that other, seemingly upstanding citizens of the town, had set the whole process in motion. As the evidence unfolds it becomes obvious that the case is going to hit the deputies much closer to home than they could have imagined. Crossbow was started during the taping of the Canadian television series, The 3-Day Novel, in which Kirkland and 11 other writers were given the challenge of each completing a novel in 72 hours. All the while, the cast were constantly followed by a camera crew filming everything from the writing process, to personal hygiene activities. Celebrated mystery novelist Ridley Pearson encouraged Kirkland to try his hand at fiction after the success their mutual friend Dave Barry had with Big Trouble. Pearson says, "Not only is Gordon accomplished in his field, but he is funny I don't know if you have ever tried being funny on paper, but it is one of life's miracles. Gordon should probably be sainted. But don't take my word for it; just read him." Parental Advisory: Some language and scenes may not be appropriate for all ages.