I Have Always Been Here Before

Private detective Frank J. Smiley is a hellhound on the trail at Cedar Lawn mobile home park. The jaded host of cable TV's Modern Day Monsters has seen his fair share of hoaxes, but the Lizard Woman of Okamassee County just may be the real thing. Things finally start looking up for Roosevelt Law after his wife sends him to kill a rattlesnake hiding in the church yard. The voices in a homeless woman's head lead her into the shadow of death with vengeance in mind. Two reunited childhood friends learn the hard way that war is hell on the home front, too. In a not-too-distant alternate future, a factory worker grieving for his dead wife faces tough decisions when his son, a genetic engineering prodigy, finds a way to bring her back from the dead. These stories and the others in this debut collection evoke a gritty vision of a world in which all sorts of things, both wondrous and evil, just might be hiding in the shadows.