Port Starbird (Storm Ketchum Adventures Book 1)
by Garrett Dennis
– Learn MoreA cozy, quirky, low-key mystery set in the Outer Banks of North Carolina.
Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Quarterfinalist
Best Kindle Book Award Semifinalist
Red City Reviews Book Awards – 5-Star Review
When a wealthy developer suspected of murder comes offering money for the land, Ketch is the last to hold out. Ketch’s knowledge of the island is professorial, something that will appeal to readers who adore a strong sense of place. The accented dialogue creates the right southern atmosphere… A good effort. – Publishers Weekly
Garrett Dennis’ Port Starbird has everything that a fun, summer weather novel should have – adventure, romance, beautiful beaches, guitar playing, underwater excursions, and, of course, murder mystery intrigue! Storm Ketchum is a retiree who is discovering that life after your career may be even better than the crazy days of your twenties. After settling in Avon, North Carolina and purchasing the house of his realistic, fiscally responsible retirement beach dreams, Ketch is ready to live out the rest of his days quietly. However, his life takes a stressful turn when his home and habits are threatened by Bob Ingram, the dirtiest real estate mogul in Avon. In an effort to avoid Ingram’s threats of eminent domain and save his home, Ketch becomes the secret detective that his parents had always hoped he would be. With his faithful canine sidekick by his side and the good-looking Kari in his bed, Ketch begins a journey that will bring secrets to the surface and make him into a different man with a different view of the world. – Red City Review
What do you get when you combine coastal history and ecology, scuba diving, a love story, and a violent crime? In this quirky low-key murder mystery/adventure, Storm Ketchum, a damaged emigre to the coastal town of Avon on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, likes to mind his own business and isn’t any kind of detective – until he’s forced to become one by extraordinary circumstances. On the verge of losing his modest waterfront home to an unscrupulous developer, Ketch stumbles onto the scene of a crime that might expose the perpetrator of an unsolved murder and enable him to save not only his own home, but also the similarly threatened bohemian boatyard community he’s inexorably drawn into. And in case Plan A fails, he’s hard at work on a Plan B that’s both laudable and pitiable – if he can’t stop them from seizing his property and ruining what’s left of his historic town, he’s hell-bent on turning the event into a unique kind of political statement. Together with his loyal dog, a salty charter boat captain, the sketchy denizens of the boatyard, and an alluring scuba diving instructor who may or may not have a hidden agenda, Ketch struggles to make sense of his new reality, while trying to save some of the things that really matter along the way.
Garrett lives in upstate New York, where he and his wife serve as the housekeeping staff for two rather spoiled dogs. His degrees include a B.S. and M.S. in biology, and an M.S. in computer science. After a career that ranged from testing experimental pharmaceuticals (legal ones, and not on himself!) to developing mainframe computer operating system software, he decided to retire from the real world and try his hand at writing fiction. Garrett lived in North Carolina for a while some years back, and the current focus of his writing is a place that’s special to him, the Outer Banks region of North Carolina, which he still occasionally visits when possible. Garrett is working on his second novel (PORT OF REFUGE, the next Storm Ketchum Adventure – keep a weather eye out for it!).
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