THE RUINS–New Release (Dec. 2014)
Three years after Hurricane Katrina destroyed his home and drowned his girlfriend, ex-New Orleans assistant District Attorney Ken Marchand ekes out a living on the North Shore helping flood victims reclaim their lives. But one hot August evening, on a visit to his old New Orleans Lakeview neighborhood, Marchand sees police standing over a body. What ensues is a cat-and-mouse game between Detective Konrad Treacher, a savvy black detective sure Marchand knows more than he’s telling, and the lawyer, who begins to wonder if his girlfriend is really dead. The climax occurs almost three years to the day after Katrina, when another hurricane, Gustav, strikes the area.
THE LEVEE (Academy Chicago Publishers, 2009)
A true-crime writer returns home to solve the mystery that haunted his boyhood
After witnessing an execution, true-crime writer Colin Douglas starts having nightmares of himself as a boy, alone by the levee, trapped in the mud of the Mississippi River. Each night, the dreams grow worse, becoming horrid recreations of the day his childhood died.
In 1959, Colin and three friends went camping on the levee, across from the tumbledown old Windsong plantation. When one of the boys disappeared, Colin went searching for him, and was approaching the old estate when he saw what appeared to be a ghost. The next day, he learned a woman had been murdered in the area—an unsolved crime that has haunted him ever since. Decades later, he attempts to solve this forgotten cold case, raking up something even dirtier than the muddy bottom of the Mississippi.
“[Shuman] knocks one out of the park with . . . this compelling, deftly written story.” —Booklist, starred review of The Levee
“An absorbing, well-written story…” —Kirkus Reviews on The Levee
MAYAB (Star, 1982)
His mentor dead, an archaeologist returns to the mysterious Yucatán
A novice archaeologist, Clay Holliman came to the Yucatán Peninsula in search of the secrets of the Maya. Taken in by the family of Doctor Leon, an expert on the local excavations, Clay discovered a world where the mysteries were not fully buried—where even the city was a jungle. Ten years later, his career is in a tailspin, Doctor Leon is dead, and the Yucatán is calling him home.
Although he tells the man at customs that he has not come to dig, it will not be long before Holliman is lured back into the jungle. He goes to the infamous site at Chan Chen that has already claimed the reputations and lives of several brilliant archaeologists, and which Holliman must conquer if he is to unearth the truth about the jungle—and himself.
THE MOBIUS MAN (Dorchester Publishing Co., 1982)
Hunting Mexican guerillas, a CIA agent fights to regain his memory and stay alive
David doesn’t remember the bomb going off. In fact, he doesn’t remember anything at all. He was on a mission in Buenos Aires when the explosion sent a piece of shrapnel into his skull, and it missed killing him by a fraction of an inch. His memory in tatters, he returns to the United States to heal, meeting his wife for what seems like the first time. His memory will return gradually, the doctors say, but for now he feels like half a man—half a man who is about to take on a mission.
In Mexico, the CIA has been paying a guerilla organization to keep radical militants at bay. When their liaison with the rebels is found dead, David is sent to discover who killed him and why. Though his memory might never return, as he slips deeper into the shadowy world of Mexican outlaws, David will see things he’d just as soon forget.