Brice Austin

John Briggs, a career detective in Gulfport, Louisiana, doesn't need any more excitement in his life right now: he's a single dad trying to raise a teenage son. But this new case he's been assigned to is getting scary in a hurry. He's worked the narcotics beat for twenty years; he's used to watching junkies kill themselves, one fix at a time. What he's not used to is junkies that go berserk and kill other people-lots of other people. What he's not used to is junkies that keep coming at you even after they've been shot, even after they've been set on fire. Then one of his informants tips him off that there's something new on the street: a drug called Must that just might be the cause of the crime wave. And nobody knows where it's coming from. The only clue John is able turn up seems like a strange one: while searching for Must on the Internet he stumbles across musth, the state of sexual arousal that causes bull elephants to rampage. Well, "rampage" is a pretty fair description of what drug addicts have been doing all over his town, but elephants? Still, figuring a strange clue is better than no clue at all, John follows up with Jill Relson, a pachyderm expert at the local zoo. Only to find out he's as much interested in her as he is getting to the bottom of the case. Together, John and Jill start digging. But the trouble with digging is you tend to find things. Old things. Dead things. Things that won't stay dead. Which maybe doesn't matter so long as those things are on the other side of an ocean. But when a lifelong friend of Jill's is kidnapped in Kenya and she flies over there to help in spite of John's frantic warnings, he has a decision to make. Should he follow Jill to Africa to try and rescue her from God-knows-what kind of trouble? Or should he stay put for what is shaping up to be a junkie apocalypse on the streets of his hometown?

Must

Volume 2 of the Must Trilogy A ruthless Colonel, Omar Muka, gathers to him a dark army of "men without souls" . . . Albinos, hunted by witch doctors who believe their severed hands can ward off Evil, rally around a charismatic but flawed leader to form an army of their own . . . Poachers, driven by greed, push elephants ever closer to the brink of extinction . . . Against this backdrop, Detective John Briggs arrives in East Africa with only one purpose in mind: to track down Jill Relson, the woman he loves, and bring her home to America. But the reason Jill came here in the first place was to find her best friend, who was kidnapped by Colonel Muka. Which means that if John wants to rescue her, he'll have to run a gauntlet between Black and White armies. But the X factor in all of this is the elephants . . .

Black & White

Volume 3 of the Must Trilogy The Out Of. The Elephant Land. Do these mythical places actually exist? And within them do they harbor salvation . . . or destruction? Two years have passed since the events of Black & White. Hamilton Briggs is back in Africa, working for the Wildlife Investigation Agency in Dar es Salaam, helping to write a report which he hopes will wake up the world to the desperate plight of elephants. But when his boss sends him to a remote part of southern Tanzania to check out the disappearance (and possible murder) of one of his co-workers, Ham finds himself caught up in what amounts to a war-a war involving albinos, eco-terrorists, elephant poachers, and ultimately the elephants themselves. Things aren't really as bad as all that, though, because you see there's this kick-ass girl . . .

The War of the Out Of

It is 1941 Rose and Dr. Jack Blake, on the run from suffocating lives in Richmond, Virginia's upper-crust society, arrive in Macao, Portugal's Far East colony. She is nineteen, he forty, and both their names and marriage are fictions. Soon, Jack is working at one of the local hospitals, charged with the impossible task of treating the tens of thousands of refugees pouring into the city from war-torn mainland China. Rose, pregnant with a child she isn't certain she wants, becomes involved with a network of spies orchestrated by a charismatic Eurasian businessman, Charlie Ho. As Rose and Jack's relationship unravels, Hong Kong is attacked, bringing the Pacific War to Macao's doorstep. Meanwhile, António Ferreira, Chief of Police in this so-called City of the Name of God, wrestles with twin obsessions. While relentlessly pursuing Wong Kong Kit, a bandit who is throttling the flow of smuggled rice that is keeping both Macao's residents and refugees alive, Ferreira contemplates abandoning his family and career for the sake of the "Singsong girl" Lanhua, an elegant prostitute. Against the backdrop of a rapidly-spreading World War, and the growing threat of Japanese invasion, these three restless souls search for the meaning of Love, Freedom, Responsibility and Salvation in the "Casablanca of the Orient."

Brice Austin

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