The Deerslayer Spiral
A LAW FIRM. A PHILOSOPHER. SEVEN MURDERS.
by
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EXCERPTS FROM THE DEERSLAYER SPIRAL
From the prologue: “The bullet struck my skull, right before I heard the shot. You know the cliché about your life flashing before your eyes? It’s not like that. It’s not a flash at first. It’s more like a spiral.”
From Chapter Two: “The after-dinner sex was more stylized and vigorous than usual. Fänta understood and loved to explore the possibilities within sex, and the essence of sex, which for her was very much in the drama—the psychology—involved. This evening, she changed into one of her tight, low-cut cocktail dresses, something easily pulled off . My role? To remove the dress and toss it half-way across the room. On a good night, Fänta has a penchant for excess, a wildness, something primal.”
From Chapter Three: “I followed up with three face-smashes from the butt-end of my M-16. It looked like his eyes filled with blood on the second strike, which must have driven the temporal bone of his nose into his brain. The horrible death of the Malay man never left me. It just compounded itself and played over and over again for years, mostly at night as I fell asleep, or in my dreams—an involuntary, cumulative psychological effect like post-traumatic stress. Still, on that first day in Malaysia, I was glad to be alive.”
From Chapter Twenty-Nine: “Skill in the martial arts is certainly marvelous, deep, full of secrets... As a metaphor, fighting skill is so useful and meaningful—it cuts through mental confusion, uncertainty and self-doubt. But killing also cut deeply into me, and it would take me years just to recognize this wound, much less heal it. Killing was not an enlightenment. Not an openness, but an absence of existential support. A threat of hell, inside or outside myself.”
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About the Book
THE DEERSLAYER SPIRAL is a sexy legal thriller with a psychological twist.
Ethan Compton is a handsome, ambitious law student with a beautiful, rich fiancée, the daughter of the senior partner of a prestigious San Francisco law firm. He has left behind a tough early life to find himself with a promising legal career that could make all his dreams come true.
Things change, however, when a young woman is shot to death in the alley behind the trendy Inner Temple Café. Ethan must help defend the murder suspect. Soon he becomes trapped in a murder case wherein he must enter the world of a mind-control expert who causes him to question his own sanity.
A second murder rocks the city. Then, a third. As the killings escalate, Ethan suspects his work is being monitored and sabotaged. But by whom?
Against his will, Ethan is led into a terrifying journey and must wrestle with memories from his brutal military career and his own mother’s murder when he was a boy.
With a shocking climax that’s impossible to anticipate, The Deerslayer Spiral is a masterful exploration of high-stakes double-dealing with the legal establishment, the justice system and the government. You have never read anything like it.
About the Author
JONATHAN MARK BRUCE is an attorney who studied writing at the University of California at Berkeley. As a prosecutor and attorney in private practice, he has litigated numerous jury trials and worked on homicide and death penalty cases.
Bruce served overseas in the U.S. Army infantry before two stints in the Peace Corps in Eastern Europe, where he earned a doctorate in Philosophy from the University of Sofia. As an immigration lawyer, he has become fluent in Bulgarian, Russian, French, and Spanish. He also represents combat veterans who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.
The author’s many interests include Chinese and Malaysian martial arts. He is at work on a second novel about an American lawyer in Ukraine.