Showing results by author "J. Gessler" in All Categories

Hugh Kerr, famous Los Angles defense attorney, his new wife and longtime personal assistant Ellen, their "adopted" parents, Lt. Hank Wade and his wife Mary, Hugh's best friend and private investigator, Jack Merrick, along with the LA District Attorney, B.B. Bond all belong to the exclusive "Hugh Kerr Gang". Good times or bad, the gang members all support each other. The Conundrum of the Executed Defendant pushes the boundaries of both good times and bad. The Gang has some fun designing a fixed raffle, so one of their own will be the predetermined winner of a much-needed home improvement ...

They said the boy was haunted and the townspeople of Lawrence, Kansas, wanted nothing to do with widower Seth Ward or his two children. In 1857, superstitions run high.Left alone to raise Patricia and Peter, Seth has been isolated from his neighbors since the death of his wife from a lingering, malignant disease. Nearly at his wits end, a young woman appears in response to an advertisement for help.Barbara Nelander dared brave the terror of a dead woman's ghost and the haunting of her son because she was not like other women. Born in Nova Scotia, "Nelander," as she was called, had served as...

Hellhole, Kansas, was no ordinary town. Like other places, it was comprised of desultory businesses, saloons, livery stable, bank, and clapboard homes, clinging to life by their figurative fingernails. What set this hider town apart from other post-Civil War outcroppings of civilization was that it also housed a United States Marshal's office. Hellhole was known to the authorities in Topeka as the place where lawmen went to die. Claw Kiley had served in the Union Army during the Civil War, being discharged, as he had entered, a private. That fact hardly qualified him for a Federal position,...

The post-Civil War era in the American West was a troubled, turbulent time. With hatreds still seething, men often took it upon themselves to enforce their own brand of justice. When they did, it brought them in conflict with those few who attempted to apply a standardized set of rules and regulations to a rawboned civilization. Convincing men who did not fall into the category of outlaws but who were, rather, self-appointed vigilantes to follow the law was not a simple task, yet that was what Marshal Claw Kiley faced when he confronted a gang of mountain men from West Virginia, out to ...

Hugh and Ellen Kerr promised themselves this time they would get it right. Not only was it their daughter’s first Halloween celebration, they were going to hold the party in Lodi, California, far from the Los Angeles debacle which had ruined last year’s celebration. Everything seemed to be going their way when they discovered an old mansion they could rent and transform into a spooky haunted house. The owner of the property, Lob Finnian, a former Major League baseball player, seemed eager to help and with the assistance of family and friends, decorations and Halloween-themed games were ...

A knock came on the door in the dead of night. On the verge of Civil War, such a summons meant trouble and danger. To ignore it offered momentary reprieve for the Ward family: it also meant shirking duty. Such was not in their make-up, for the Wards, otherwise known as the landlocked "Kansas Pirates," had taken the buccaneer's oath to protect one another, and, by association, the oppressed, against tyranny and injustice.Their help was urgently needed to guide runaway slaves from "Bleeding Kansas" across the river to safer ground. Barbara Nelander-Ward, former first mate aboard the Bottom ...

Leaving Rose Theodore behind in England to serve as his chandler, Captain Rudy Blake returns to war-torn Richmond. Ordering his crew to wait for him aboard his blockage-running ship Reprobate, he travels to Atlanta where he intends to oversee to his wartime enterprises. During the long and uncomfortable train ride, he falls asleep and is transported back in time to relive his experiences of a year ago. In 1862, Atlanta is a rawboned city desiring to become the center of the Confederacy’s manufacturing and transportation. Already having established himself as a speculator and silent ...

Back in London, Kimbo is stuck doing midnight duty at the CANS office when he receives a peculiar call. Someone is asking for the time. Annoyed at the seeming inanity of the question he is about to hang up when the man explains all electronic devices throughout the city have failed. Suspecting no more than a mundane power outage, Kimbo nevertheless decides to investigate. Immediately confirming the caller’s story, he finds cars stalled at intersections and the city darkened by a total lack of electric lighting. Intrigued, he traces the extent of the power outage, discovering it covered an...

“New Beginnings:Book IV Peas in a Pod” Summary How do you put your life together after an unimaginable tragedy? How to rediscover and restructure your identity? How to find purpose out of chaos? Dr. Robert Kamer is forced to face those questions after the devastating events involving his brother at the Kamer/Jackson Institute. Finding no answers at the K/J I, he flees to the one person in the world who can help him. In so doing, he leaves his partner, Dr. Samuel Jackson, behind to face not only his own personal agonies but the suspicion and distrust of the staff he is compelled to ...

The Conundrum of the Loveless Marriage This sixth book in the Hugh Kerr Mystery series, takes a dark turn to touch on some very sensitive topics, especially for the newlyweds. Hugh and Ellen are trying to start fresh following their recent marriage and several highly emotional personal and professional events. The first day back in the office they are confronted with an unscheduled client asking very real questions about her rights as a married woman with respect to boundaries of the marriage bed. The law with respect to marital relations falls strongly in the man's favor, and Hugh could ...

After the attempted kidnapping of his wife, Ellen, Los Angeles attorney Hugh Kerr realizes the murder case against Daniel Jenkins is inextricably mixed up with his own tortured youth. In order to exonerate his client and clear up the twenty-year old murders of his parents and brother, he must turn to district attorney Bartholomew Bond for help. The idea of laying bare his past is not an easy one, but after confessing some details that link him to the four Canadians who actually perpetrated the crime, the prosecutor agrees to keep his secrets as long as justice is served. Cleverly deducing ...

The Believer: New Beginnings Book 1 Dr. Robert Kamer, the world renown psychiatrist and financier, had a secret very few of his colleagues could even guess, and he was willing to go to extreme measures to keep it that way. He was a boy genius from a wealthy family. With a gift for languages and a photographic memory, he graduated college and medical school well before his contemporaries even finished high school. Rob's one love was his younger brother, Toby. Born with a learning disability, it was Toby's condition that motivated the young genius to pursue a career in psychiatry. Rob's ...

Summary “The Conundrum of the Blundering Bear” Tragedy strikes while Hugh and Ellen Kerr are on a working holiday in the Big Bear region of California. While returning to the lodge late at night, Ellen swerves to avoid what she believes to be a bear standing in the road. The car plummets down a gully, trapping her inside. She manages to escape with the assistance of a stranger but then faces criminal charges from the local sheriff. Complicating matters, when a child is reported missing, Hugh and Jack are called upon to help search for her. This entangles them in a murder case when the ...

“skull and cRossBones” Summary Escaping Civil War-torn Richmond, Captain Rudy Blake and Rose Theodore, the newest member of the blockage-runner Reprobate, sail for England. During the voyage Rudy and Rose’s relationship deepen as he has the opportunity of teaching her shipcraft, armament and the nuances of sailing. Working together to thwart a plot by the notorious Captain Janey, the pair begin a “conquest” of Victorian England that includes establishing Rose as his chandler, the purchase of the Blake House and a foray into high society where a spirited drinking contest proves ...

When Captain Robert Andrew, recently retired from forty years active service in the army, walks into the law office of Hugh Kerr and Associate, Ellen Kerr has grave misgivings about him. His legal quest is simple enough: is he legally responsible for his father if the elder Andrew could no longer care for himself? Offered his legal options, Robert states his belief his father, Ian Andrew, is in need of professional care. He asks Hugh to substantiate his opinion and after interviewing Ian, the Kerrs are reluctantly forced to agree. After obtaining a power of attorney for Robert, who promptly...

Although short-staffed, the Kamer/Jackson Institute continues to admit students that require all the time, skill and dedication Drs. Robert Kamer and Samuel Jackson can give them. Included among these newcomers are a boy diagnosed as suffering from “failure to thrive,” a man experiencing the devastating effects of drug withdrawal and a convicted arsonist described by a judge as “inveterate.” An interview with a psychiatrist applying for a job goes terribly wrong and “Mother” Mary Schaeffer must try and hold things together, while Sam’s therapy for Toby includes the services of...

Shy, almost to the point of disabling, Sebastian “Nox” Knox, the elder son and heir to his late mother’s estate, had to prove he was successful in his chosen position as a musician before age 30, or lose the quarter of a million dollar inheritance to his half-brother, Arthur. The youth stated out well, rising to the position of a virtuoso in a major orchestra, but a series of false rumors forced him to abandon that position. A growing lack of confidence led Nox to the life of a recluse and although he continued composing, fear prevented him from showing his work to others. Hugh Kerr, ...

“Ask him about John Paul.” If one sentence stuck in Rose Theodore’s mind, that was it. Innocuous by itself, within those five words lay a world of accusation, charged against Captain Blake not only by the speaker, First Officer D’Artagnan, but held in resentment by the entire crew of the Reprobate. Although the un-Civil War had ended and Rudy returned to England, the horrors of his service in the artillery lingered. Professing “not to be the man I was,” Rose is more than willing to give him the time he needed to recover. Not so the federal agents who have swarmed over England ...

It was not the maiden voyage of the intergalactic prototype space vessel, merely a sixty-day test flight. The ship did not even have a name; she was merely called ONE, a designation without dignity. The skeleton crew participating her last “assignment” – that which would precede the actual mission – were derisively referred to as “crash dummies,” meaning they would be expected to step aside when the actual captain and crew assumed their rightful positions for the multi-year mission. Nothing was expected to go wrong. When the unexpected happened – when the ship lost the ability...

Captain Elfert Malkin’s name was synonymous with that of his ship as it was said he treasured her life over his own. When Invaders breached the outer rim of the galaxy entering The Community, they threatened total annihilation unless immediate capitulation was forthcoming. The individual they chose to deliver the surrender was Captain Malkin, for precisely the reason he had earned his reputation: he would never consent to a suicide mission, sacrificing his vessel for the greater good of the civilization he represented. Fully aware of the reason Malkin was chosen, his superiors ordered him...