"A Good Death"

A GOOD DEATH BY ROBERT STOKES J.C. Dance, an ex-Navy SEAL and bounty hunter gets a call from a former boss that sends him on a dangerous and circuitous investigation that reaches into the heart of the White House and the administration of conservative President Franklin Todd who is campaigning for re-election a few months hence. But his National Security advisor Pope McIntyre has a more radical plan for the President's re-election. In his investigation, Dance discovers that a suicide of Preston Gage, a pre-eminent Asia scholar and close friend of the President is linked to a closely held secret and cover-up at the highest level of the Todd Administration. But the deeper plot is created by McIntyre. Unbeknownst to the President, McIntyre has negotiated with a Japanese terrorist to plant a dirty bomb in Madison Square Garden at the Republican National Convention. The bomb will kill thousands of delegates and give President Todd the authority to suspend the Constitution and push through a series of right wing policies that will guarantee his re-election and give him the power to destroy his Democratic rival for the presidency. Dance is also trying to be reunited with his estranged wife who becomes a target along with their daughter from hit men hired by McIntyre to eliminate the nosy investigator and his family. In a dramatic climax, Dance tracks the Japanese terrorist, Shigenobu, and his bomb from Tokyo to L.A., Reno, Nevada and finally to New York. The dirty bomb is set to go off during President Todd's speech. Shigenobu's own motive for planting the bomb is to avenge the killing of his family when the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. * * * * * Robert Stokes - rstokes529@gmail.com
About the Author: PROFILE: A successful Communications Consultant, journalist, novelist and biographer with expertise and proven skills in various print styles ranging from news and feature writing (AP, Newsweek and Life magazines) to ghostwriting, media relations, marketing, opinion articles, and copy writing for companies and nonprofit organizations. Mr. Stokes is a journalist, novelist, playwright, poet and memoirist, who covered the Vietnam War, (1966-1968), and the Chicago 7 trial of radicals charged with riots at the 1968 Democratic convention for Newsweek Magazine, as well as the Attica Prison Riot for Life Magazine. Mr. Stokes is the author of "Walking Wounded," a novel of the Vietnam War published by Dell. He also wrote the stage drama "A Place Called Heartbreak" that appeared off-Broadway in the l980s about American prisoners of war in Hanoi and their struggle with allegiance to duty, honor, country in an unpopular war. He is a co-author of the memoir, "Odyssey of an Eavesdropper: My Life in Electronic Countermeasures and My Battle Against the FBI," with Martin L. Kaiser III, published in 2006 by Carroll & Graf Publishers, New York. Mr. Stokes recently published his first collection of poetry, "Light From a Different Angle." The poetry brings the reader a panoply of startling and poignant visions ranging from war, foreign and domestic - Vietnam, Attica, 9/ll and the déjà vu of Iraq - to the conundrums of love, suicide, death and the dread of aging, dementia and things left unsaid. Mr. Stokes has also taught news, feature, expository writing and crisis management for more than a decade at the college level, including The American University, Washington, DC; Brooklyn College, NY; the University of Connecticut, Stamford, CT; .Southern Connecticut State University, New Haven, CT; and the California State University at Los Angeles, CA. Mr. Stokes is a frequent contributor to the Opinion page of the Connecticut Post which published six of his articles in 2011 regarding the challenges and successes of ex-felons making the difficult transition from jail to tax paying citizens. Mr. Stokes has a B.A. in Journalism from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, N.C.