These poems represent the musings of a man: an intelligent man, a world traveler, a man in his fifties going slightly mad from booze and grief and a perception of a world in a headlong rush to a future he does not understand and has no wish to.

We know him only as "Tweed." But we're never sure whether he is speaking of Tweed himself, or Tweed as alter ego, and we see his world, perhaps our world, through his eyes. We wander with him in the past, sometimes in the present, and very rarely in the future. For him, there is no future, only the daily task of living it through, and this collection is a journey with him.

December 1939. Nighttime Manhattan. Snow mixed with rain. Two shots ring out in an alley. Max Grant, private investigator, two double bourbons under his belt, enters the alley to investigate. A man, two bullets in his chest, dying, paws at his coat pocket. His only words are, "Find the nude on the cigarette case." Grant removes the cigarette case, looks at the picture, pockets it, then calls to bystanders to get the police. Curiosity, even without a client, prompts him to investigate and leads him into the murky sphere of activity that surrounds the beginnings of the atom bomb.

The war in Europe is public, but something else was going on, quietly, behind the scenes, never making headlines in major newspapers or news programs on radio. Walter Lippman doesn't write about it and Edward R. Murrow never mentions it in his CBS news broadcasts. That something is the exchange of nuclear fission information between mathematicians and physicists in the Unites States, England, and Europe. In 1939 that information exchange has diminished in volume between the western scientific communities and those under German control and influence, most notably Denmark and Norway.

Sarah Bennett, the nude on the cigarette case, has been kidnapped and is being held in the Redhook area of New York by German agents. Bennett, a scientist, travels Europe under the guise of an art dealer but is also the conduit for shared information between scientists in Nazi dominated Europe and those in the United States. And Max Grant, in love with a photo on a cigarette case, is just the guy to go looking for her.

Joshua Pitt, enquiry agent in London England of 1896, has just returned from Ireland when he receives two telegrams, both from Kendal England. One is from a friend and distant relative asking for advice, and the other from a wealthy previous client who is in mortal danger from a man whose brother he killed some twenty years before. The threat will be carried out in twenty six days unless Pitt can track down and deal with the potential killer, or possibly killers. Pitt, an inveterate pipe smoker, takes a part time position in a tobacco shop in Kendal, hoping to gain information but it soon proves fruitless as the daughter of the wealthy landowner is kidnapped.

In the midst of the investigation, Pitt also rekindles a relationship with a nursing sister he met on a previous case but instead of the relationship being a complication, it is beneficial, and the door to a new life may be opening for him.

Evan Begay, Navajo, is a modern day amateur archeologist. While on a trip to the Jemez Mountains, he stumbles on a cave filled with Inca gold artifacts and pictographs that tell the story of a great Anasazi migration. But he is being watched. The day before he intends to break camp and notify the authorities of his find, he is shot and falls into a deep fissure in the mesa where he remains until he dies. A search by authorities finds nothing but an empty camp.

Evan's wife, Anna, calls on Hays McKay, an Ohio security firm investigator and old friend, to look for her husband. McKay travels to New Mexico with his fianc, Deirdre, and together with a guide and his sister, they search for Evan Begay. In doing so, they become the targets of four men who are removing the gold artifacts and melting them down to sell. The McKay party finds Evan Begay and the cave, but in doing so, they set up a deadly confrontation between themselves and the thieves who have plundered the cave.

The short story, "The Kendal Affair," first appeared in my collection of short stories titled, The Sherlock Holmes Adventure. Though complete in itself, it left unanswered questions for Victorian enquiry agent, Joshua Pitt, and prompted a second and longer story titled, Kendall Endgame. Because in some ways, Endgame is a continuation of the original story, The Kendal Affair has been included as the first story in this collection.

The title story, "Gran Quivira," is a rather non-traditional romance placed in the late 1930s between an young Navajo woman and an out of work Apache construction worker, both searching for more out of life than they have experienced before they met. Gran Quivira was a thriving Pueblo community in southern New Mexico several hundred years ago but was in ruins by the 1930s. The journey toward Gran Quivera and beyond is their story.

The final story, "Just Plain Cliff Smith," was inspired by the true stories of some of the rugged characters who lived, loved, fought, and died in the Arizona Territory of the American Southwest during the late 1800s. Cliff Smith is an occasional but highly selective gun for hire with a simple code of ethics: Do unto others....

These poems represent the musings of a man: an intelligent man, a world traveler, a man in his fifties going slightly mad from booze and grief and a perception of a world in a headlong rush to a future he does not understand and has no wish to.

We know him only as "Tweed." But we're never sure whether he is speaking of Tweed himself, or Tweed as alter ego, and we see his world, perhaps our world, through his eyes. We wander with him in the past, sometimes in the present, and very rarely in the future. For him, there is no future, only the daily task of living it through, and this collection is a journey with him.

Terrorist activities in the United States are not confined to foreign agents. Marvin

THEN is composed of four stories prior to the mid 1930's, three of which are set in Victorian England with an inquiry agent at the time of Sherlock Holmes. The last of the four is the story of a miner looking for work in the coal mining fields of Kentucky during the Great Depression of the 1930's.

NOW is also composed of five contemporary stories. Two, regarding an ex cop from Cleveland who drinks and smokes too much and finds himself neck deep and personally involved in two murders while living in New Mexico. Two more involve ordinary people thrown together by circumstance and hard luck with unpredictable results, while the final story of this group is one of far-off Pakistan and good intentions gone astray.

WHENEVER makes up the last three: macabre, nightmares of horror that visit in dreams on the darkest of nights when we are alone with our own demons. Dreams that one hopes will never be repeated...

"He turned up the light, filled and lit a pipe, and then turned to the note from Sherlock Holmes. It read:

"Pitt--Inspector MacLeish paid me a visit this evening to discuss the particulars of a murder that occurred at Coldfall Lodge, Tetherdown. Mr. Artimus Weatherill was brutally murdered and property taken, including a fair amount in sovereigns. There are some particulars regarding this event that puzzle MacLeish and since I am returning to Glasgow in the morning to testify in the Seamus Walsh affair, I took the liberty of telling the Inspector you would look into it in my absence. If your appointments will give you the morning, MacLeish will be at Coldfell Lodge at seven o'clock. Best regards, Holmes""

Enter Joshua Pitt, inquiry agent, chess playing opponent of Dr. Watson, and one-time Baker Street Irregular who has set up shop little more than a block away on Baker Street. A young man in his late twenties, he is rarely without a smoking pipe at hand, a good blend of tobacco, and prefers strong Assam tea and Highland whiskey. His cases are as much adventure as mystery, and the reader is invited along for the ride, in a hansom, of course.