Offthebookshelf.com
Aaron Kruse
Aaron Kruse is a former Marine and retired Operations Officer for the Central Intelligence Agency. He lives in Southeast Iowa with his wife Diane, also a retired CIA officer, on their farm. The two enjoy farming, hunting and fishing, photography/writing and travel.
All Books By This Author:
- Gunder's Bride
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Life on the New Mexico frontier in 1878 is not easy for anyone, but for mountain man Andy Gunder, orphaned since age 10, it’s a daily struggle for survival. When a savage bandit robs the bank and kidnaps three girls from the school, Andy takes the job of tracking down the bandit and getting the girls back. All he wants is the money the town has offered. What he gets, he never expected.
The surprise is on him when one of the girls turns out to be as tough as he is. But when he returns home with the job done, he’s still as much an outcast in the town as ever before. Andy’s chance to pay the town back and break with his past is a while in coming, but when it comes he grabs it – and sets the stage for a future he can’t imagine.
From New Mexico to Wyoming, Andy goes in search of fortune and friends. And in the end he learns you just never know what fortune and a few friends have planned for you.
Gunder’s Bride is the first in the Andy Gunder series. Look for the following books, Gunder’s Law and Spirit Walks.
- Genres: Adventure, Historical Fiction, Suspense, Westerns, Young Adult
- Gunder's Law
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Frontiersman Andy Gunder doesn’t know if there really is a Heaven, but for him his ranch in Wyoming is close enough. With his wife Sandy beside him, he’s making new friends, has the respect of neighbors, and he’s growing his businesses. Life is good.
But, even in Heaven, things can go wrong – and as usual, humans are behind it. A leisurely trip to Rock Springs to pick up supplies goes wrong when he crosses the son of the town banker and kills him. Then it turns out the Marshal there knows more than he’s telling about Andy. And a new silver strike in Andy’s hometown brings in some bad elements who just won’t listen to reason.
From a phony gold strike on his ranch to threatened exposure of Andy’s own past to a mysterious watcher who visits the ranch to spy, humans are again testing Andy’s patience. He does the best he can to avoid trouble. But when the threat turns to Sandy, it’s time to lay down the law.
Gunder’s Law.
Gunder’s Law is the second in the Andy Gunder series.
- Genres: Adventure, Historical Fiction, Suspense, Westerns, Young Adult
- Home Guard
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Disenchanted with the Central Intelligence Agency's quantity-over-quality culture, Bob Benson got out and works now as a private investigator. No matter how mundane the job, he's going to finish it and give his client a quality product.
'Mundane' changes when he's asked to locate a missing illegal alien who vanished off the streets of Chicago seven years earlier. It quickly develops the woman was mixed up in a drug distribution network, and may have hopped a ride on a cocaine producer’s unregistered money flight out of the country. It doesn’t take long to see there’s a lot about his new client which just doesn’t add up.
There's no denying the challenge.
Things get messy when somebody surreptitiously enters Bob's home and office in a case which just does not seem to merit that kind of resources. Then it turns out his new client is linked to a former narcotics target of his.
And somebody else is lurking on the fringes of the case.
From the client to the mission to Bob's very best friend, everything in the case seems to have taken a sinister turn. This one requires all his counterintelligence experience and instincts, and a healthy dose of paranoia, just to stay alive.Home Guard is the first book in the Bob Benson PI series. Look for the second book, Bring Her Back to Me.
- Genres: Adventure, Crime Fiction, Mystery, Suspense, Young Adult
- Bring Her Back to Me
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Private Investigator Bob Benson takes on a dying man’s request to bring home his kidnapped daughter. What he can’t understand is what the kidnappers want. There have been no ransom demands, but there is evidence of torture. As if the situation isn’t confusing enough, it appears the girl purposely erased all details of her own past to hide her trail, and may have cooperated with her kidnappers.
As Bob begins to piece together her past, he finds a sordid trail of drugs and casual sex, a self-destructive spiral ending with her disappearance. Her college crowd won’t talk to him; her professors don’t remember her; her drug supplier disappeared with her; and her father only grudgingly supplies important details which might clear up the mystery.
Throw in the meanest narcotics pusher he’s ever met and a private security man who seems fanatically dedicated to the client, and it takes all Bob’s CIA-honed talents to finally find the key to the mystery.
Bring Her Back to Me is the second in the Bob Benson PI series which starts with Home Guard.
- Genres: Adventure, Crime Fiction, Mystery, Suspense, Young Adult
- River City Justice
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At first, the death of Patty Masterson looks like nothing more sinister than the suicide of a woman overcome by shock at the loss of her son in a tragic accident. But the careful work of one very conscientious medical examiner, and Deputy Sheriff Cici Burns’ own detective work, soon convince Cici it was really murder.
The trouble is…who would want her dead? Her obviously distraught husband seems an unlikely candidate, although he collected a nice insurance payment after the death of the son and stands to collect again from her death. Her brother? He needs money to start his own business, and seems to control the husband. And, when he sees something he thinks needs doing, he just does it without a second thought or a look back. Her first husband is another wild card. He is snake-mean and might have decided it was time to pay Bobby Masterson back for the beating Bobby gave him, and the wife Bobby took away from him.
Fortunately, Cici has allies in the form of one experienced old sheriff and the chief forensics investigator. Unfortunately, she’s soon an object of interest for the dead woman’s brother. Romance, or a quest for information? Or worse? Someone’s taking a night-time interest in her home and vehicle. Is there a link with the dead woman, or the series of robberies she’s investigating? Or the woman’s brother? And at what point did someone’s interest turn deadly?
River City Justice is the first in the River City series. Look for the second book in the series, River City Ambush.
- Genres: Adventure, Crime Fiction, Mystery, Suspense, Young Adult
- River City Ambush
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A middle-aged housewife is shotgunned in rush hour traffic. A church-going, small-town college boy takes a homeowner hostage. A small-time drug pusher takes two shotgun blasts in the chest. An overweight bully is beaten to death with an iron bar in broad daylight along a public road...and nobody saw anything.
Des Moines County sheriff’s deputy Cici Burns has her hands full trying to make sense of multiple murders in a town where murder is hardly known. Clues are few, and questions many, not least of them where the husband of the murdered woman fits in. Is the Dean of the local college on Cici’s side or not? And not who or why, but how the bully was beaten to death without a clue being left behind. Most peculiar of all, none of the families of the victims seem to have any questions at all.
And finally, there’s the case of the bomber who got everything right except how to get his bomb to explode.
With the help of a wily old sheriff, an experienced forensics investigator and one insightful psychologist, Cici tries to make sense of seemingly unrelated leads. When you’re outsmarting drug dealers, murderers and possibly one psychopath, you have to be cagier than they are. But is she setting up an ambush – or walking into one?
River City Ambush is the second in the River City series.
- Genres: Adventure, Crime Fiction, Mystery, Suspense, Young Adult
- Spirit Walks
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Wyoming, in the 1890s, is still a rough and dangerous place. If most of the Indians are on reservations, horse thieves and bandits still roam the countryside, and it’s no place for the weak-willed or the squeamish.
Wyoming rancher Andy Gunder, protecting his family and ranch, does whatever is necessary and raises his son the same way. Even at seven years old, Samuel is an apt student, and Andy figures he’ll do alright on the frontier. The preacher still teaches the meek shall inherit the earth and love conquers all, and Andy believes it’s just plain foolish, but Samuel seems to have found a way to balance the two views and Andy’s very proud of his son.
When Crow Indians leave the reservation and return to the mountains seeking their ancestral way of life, they challenge young Samuel harshly and his parents beyond anything the family has ever seen; Andy and Sandy’s love becomes the only chance the boy has.
The adventure which follows provides a whole new outlook on life. Andy still knows the meek aren’t going to inherit much of anything, but sometimes, love does conquer all.
Spirit Walks is the third in the Andy Gunder series. Look also for Gunder’s Bride and Gunder’s Law.
- Genres: Adventure, Historical Fiction, Westerns, Young Adult
- The House
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“They say the dead don’t rest without a marker.”
– High Plains DrifterWhat is the true nature of Hell?
Why do some go to Purgatory?
Must everybody pass through the nether realms?
Sometimes the dead don’t rest, especially when they have unfinished business among the living. If a debt is owed, the dead can sometimes make a deal to come back and collect.
What they pay for the chance depends on how badly they want to win.
But in a deal with the devil, you never really know all the details.
And you never win.
- Genres: Adventure, Crime Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, Mystery, Religious, Suspense, Young Adult
