A THIN GRAY LINE The nation's political pundits color the New York US Senate seat safely in blue. But a month before the election, a domestic violence dispute in a posh Albany suburb draws Trooper Linda Baldwin into the center of the New York campaign. The Democratic incumbent's wife refuses to press charges. Enraged by the thought of another powerful man abusing a woman, Linda quietly pursues the truth behind the incident until someone leaks the story to the press identifying her as the responding officer. Hounded by the media and threatened by powerful figures in both political parties with an unsavory truth about her career, Linda peels back the bipartisan layers of deceit and betrayal. Her stubborn quest to expose the truth threatens her career and virtually everyone who matters to her. A week before the country will decide whether Democrats or Republicans control Supreme Court approvals for the next two years Linda is forced to choose between two competing sets of lies and deceptions in an attempt to protect herself and those she cares about. Meanwhile, Fate shows neither respect for politics nor concern for Linda's ideas about truth or the choices she thinks she makes. A THIN GRAY LINE is a fast paced and thought provoking political tale that examines the concept we call truth and poses a simple question. Is truth absolute? Or is it, as Linda's political mentor claims, an illusion created by mankind to suit the occasion? BERNIE BOURDEAU is a native of New York's capital district who currently resides with his wife in Lakeland, Florida. Also by this author CAUSED & EFFECT, the first installment of the Linda Baldwin series, a story of anger and vengeance and the price they exact.
About the Author: Bernie Bourdeau is the author of CAUSED & EFFECT, the first episode in the Linda Baldwin series. He was born and raised in Cohoes, NY a small city a few miles north of Albany, New York's capital. He spent the first half of his career working in government, most of it as a senior economic advisor to the State Senate, where he specialized in financial services issues. He developed an interest in property & casualty insurance while working for the Senate. He spent the second half of his career as president of the New York Insurance Association, a trade group of property & casualty insurance companies. For the last 8 years of his career he also managed the NY Alliance Against Insurance Fraud where he learned the intricacies of major league insurance fraud and the crime rings that run the enterprises. He is currently working on the third episode in the ongoing Linda Baldwin saga. An untimely hit and run accident ousted Trooper Linda Baldwin from her police enforcement career. After a hiatus to secure a law degree, Linda returns to pursue her lifetime work of administering justice to sex predators in GUILTY 'TIL PROVEN, the third episode in the Linda Baldwin series. Now a rookie prosecutor, Linda has not changed her opinion that the business of bringing sex predators to justice is heavily stacked against the victims, most of them women. If anything, law school served to cement the conviction. Three years earlier she brashly vowed to an Assistant District Attorney she would not only prosecute the cases but also change the system. GUILTY 'TIL PROVEN takes Linda into the world of criminal prosecution and the deal making that keeps our court systems from choking. Her first solo case, a slam dunk they tell her, forces her into the uncomfortable position of looking at the system through the eyes of the accused. What she sees will change her opinion of the justice system in ways she never thought possible.