Ex-LAPD detective turned private investigator Jack Morrison returns in Blood Wing: A Cold War Noir Thriller, the second entry in Daniel P. Douglas’s Jack Morrison’s Blood & Bourbon Mystery Files. The novella, named one of ten finalists in the inaugural ProWritingAid Novel Beginnings Contest, is now available in eBook and paperback. It follows Morrison as he investigates the death of a Black night-shift janitor at the Douglas Aircraft Company plant in Long Beach in January 1951.
The company dismisses the death as an industrial accident, closing the file without interviewing the widow. The family hires Morrison because the dead man’s brother once shared a foxhole with him in Italy during the Gothic Line campaign in 1944. As Morrison digs deeper, he uncovers a Cold War espionage operation behind the plant’s windowless concrete walls, and a murder the federal government will classify into official nonexistence before it can be proved. The story centers on a widow who refuses to accept a lie and a federal prosecutor who can pursue the spying but cannot restore the man who died, raising questions about justice when the official record will never tell the truth. The investigation moves through the McCarthy era and the Lavender Scare, the period purge of suspected homosexuals from federal and defense employment.
Selected from 14,570 entries worldwide, Blood Wing advanced through a longlist of 183 to a shortlist of ten finalists judged on opening pages, voice, and character. The contest is run by ProWritingAid, the writing-software and education company. “Being a finalist for the Novel Beginnings Contest is one of the most meaningful moments in my writing life,” Douglas said. “I’m grateful to ProWritingAid, the contest readers, and the judges for recognizing Blood Wing.”
A novella of roughly 25,000 words, Blood Wing is a complete story readable in a single sitting and requires no prior reading, serving as an entry point to the series. Readers who want Morrison’s first case can find it in Blood Tide: A Harbor Noir Thriller, set on the Los Angeles waterfront. Douglas, a pen name shared by identical twin brothers, draws on his experience as a U.S. Army veteran and former senior analyst in the U.S. intelligence community to provide authentic detail for the conspiracy and thriller elements. He was named a 2014 Foreword Reviews IndieFab Book-of-the-Year Award Finalist in Science Fiction and is a Readers’ Favorite Award winner.
