Monday, March 15, 2021

"Death Waits in the Dark"

Mark Edward Langley was instilled with a love for the American West by his father at a young age. After visiting it throughout adulthood, his connection to the land became irrevocable. After spending almost thirty years working for someone else, he retired and began to focus on writing.

Langley applied the Page 69 Test to his latest Arthur Nakai mystery, Death Waits in the Dark, and reported the following:
On page 69 of Death Waits in the Dark, we find my Navajo protagonist Arthur Nakai heading toward what he hopes will be a fruitful—even though unexpected--meeting with the mother of one of two missing girls who may have seen who killed the two sons of Arthur’s first love.

I believe if a reader opens Death Waits in the Dark to page 69, they wouldn’t get a good grasp of the storyline. Truth be told, I scanned page 69 in handful of best-selling authors books I have in my collection and it was about 50/50 that any of them had anything you would say to be tantalizing enough to give a reader a good idea of the work as a whole, so personally I don’t think that is a good way for someone to choose to purchase a novel from any author.

Death Waits in the Dark finds Arthur Nakai, a former Marine with ten years experience outside the wall in Afghanistan and twelve years tracking illegal drugs and human traffickers dragging kids and young girls across the border and selling them into worlds that shouldn’t be allowed to exist. While Arthur is attending the wake of a soldier that was under his command—the sixth to take his own life—he receives a call from Margaret Tabaaha, the first girl that taught him about love. Her two sons had been murdered, and she pleads for Arthur to do what the police can’t. Arthur’s journey leads him into the world of oil and gas exploration in New Mexico—the Land of Extraction. But when Arthur learns who the killer may be, he struggles with disbelief. Because if the police are right, the decision he will be forced to make may be something he can't live with.
Visit Mark Edward Langley's website.

My Book, The Movie: Death Waits in the Dark.

Coffee with a Canine: Mark Edward Langley & Lady Cora.

--Marshal Zeringue