Jonathan Smyth Cowboy Sleuth: The Case of the Lost Ship in the Desert

By Frank F Fiore

"The Case of the Ship in the Desert," we found ourselves exploring the mysterious presence of a Spanish galleon hidden in the unlikely locale of the Colorado Desert. This tale introduced us to an archaeologist who stumbled upon the ghost ship and paid the ultimate price with his life. As Smyth, Abbott, and Larson investi

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Hollow Man Series, LLC
• Release date: Jun 22, 2024
• ISBN: 9798330243884

Frank F Fiore

FRANKFIORE, a bestselling author of non-fiction books, has also penned four 5-star rated stirring thrillers and action/adventures. His works include CYBERKILL, a techno-thriller; IGIN, an historical fiction novel following an American teenage boy coming of age against the backdrop of WWII Japan, and The Chronicles of Jeremy Nash, a series of novels centered on conspiracy theories, unsolved mysteries, urban myths, and other themes in the style of the National Treasure movies.  He currently lives in Prescott Arizona, writing Westerns with his fetching wife Lynne, and their dogs Chisum - a big Newfoundland, Westin - a champion winning bearded collie and Duffy-a little Scottie. Visit his website: www.frankfiore.com

Book preview

Jonathan Smyth

Cowboy Sleuth

BOOK TWO

The Case of the Lost Ship

in the Desert

Frank F. Fiore

STORY BACKGROUND

THE SMYTH NOVELS ARE A NEW TWIST ON THE STANDARD WESTERN. THEY PIT THE BEST OF THE BRITISH AGAINST THE AMERICAN WEST, FILLED with action, drama, twists, turns, and gunfights.

Jack the Ripper is terrorizing the citizens of London, and there is only one connection between each murder known to the police - an amateur sleuth called Jonathan Smyth. After a particularly grizzly murder, the fickle finger of fate points directly at Smyth, who cannot be located. When Scotland Yard discovers that their prime suspect has seemingly fled to the fledgling United States, they send one of their best men, Charles Abbott, after him.

Smyth, an intrepid sleuth, is caught in a new land filled with legends, mysteries and horrors. His goal is to unmask the Ripper when he commits his gruesome and horrible murders again in the Wild West.

PROLOGUE

The grotesque body of the elderly archeologist hung from the remnants of a broken Indian burial scaffold. His body was neatly flayed. His weathered skin had been removed from his body by a slow and painful execution, now offering an easily prepared feast for the buzzards that picked at the exposed crimson colored muscles and ligaments.

A young girl, barely in her teens, wearing a tomboy hairstyle under a gray ‘boss of the plains hat’ gazed in horror at the gruesome sight. She raised her heavy horse pistol, cocked it, fired, and dispatched the vultures in a flapping of panicked feathers.

She knelt below the flayed man under the burning sun of the Salton Sink, hung her head in her hands and sobbed.

CHAPTER ONE

Gruesome, Abbott noted, reading the newspaper article on an archeologist’s death. Skinned alive, he said, sitting opposite Smyth.

It does sound like the work of the Ripper, Smyth noted as he looked out on the bleak landscape of sand and scrub brush from the train coach window.

What a desolate place, Abbott replied. Where are we going again?

An old abandoned US Army outpost that is now a nondescript town just outside the Salton Sink in California. ‘Last Chance’ it’s called. Smyth turned from the window. I wired the sheriff there and told him we were coming.

But Abbott was not listening to him. His eyes were glued on the three strange horsemen galloping along the side of the train. Horsemen was the only word for it. Any other description was beyond