Kirjahaku

The life and career of a newspaper News-Hawk at home and abroad told in ten significant moments written by Bill Lockwood. Bill has written some 14 works of fiction and memoires, but this is the first in print and was published on his 85th birthday.

After her grandfather's death, thirty-something Evie steals a map from his home. The map is a principal lead to where a box of ten-dollar gold coins was buried during Prohibition, just before the Revenuers raided her great-grandfather's illegal rum-running business out on Long Island. Evie, along with her teenaged daughter, Cindy, collects other clues, staying just a step or two ahead of her brothers, who are also after the treasure. Her search is complicated when one of the old-timers in the little town on Peconic Bay is murdered. As Evie desperately tries to track down key information to make the map work, she elicits the help of a local bartender and then that of Max, an old boyfriend. Getting rich is not easy.

During "the troubles" in Northern Ireland during the 1970s, Megan helps run contraband over the border for the illegal Irish Republican Army, trusting the ancient fairies of the mounds along the way to see her safely home. As she is drawn farther into rebel plots, she falls for a British soldier and is horrified to learn the IRA plans for him and his fellows to be blown up at their favorite bar-with a bomb she delivers and sets off. Andrew, of the Queen's Own Sixty-First Highland Division, is not happy with the assignment to Northern Ireland and longs for his hometown in Scotland. When he meets Megan, who has been sent as a spy to scout out the bar he frequents, the two have an instant attraction. He hints at the possibility of marriage and a peaceful life elsewhere, an idea she is ready to consider. But how far must she run to escape the influence of the IRA? If only her fairies would save her...

Anna, a twenty-something college graduate, is without a job comparable to her education. She works as a part-time bartender and also as pilot of her father's fishing boat in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, a city proclaiming itself "the tuna canning capital of the world" in the 1990s. Max is an academic who was maybe once in the CIA. He is a member of a staid, wealthy New England lobstering family that has branched out to buy one of the Mayaguez tuna plants. When word reaches them (thanks to Anna) of some "fishy" activities regarding their latest acquisition, they send Max to investigate. Anna and Max would rather find out more about each other, but in no time they are embroiled in a high-seas smuggling run, tracked by the U.S. Coast Guard. The bad guy has an assault rifle in his trombone case, so it's not your parents' Caribbean cruise-romance will have to wait.

Alison, US Army Intelligence agent and would-be Mata Hari, agrees to help Vatican Security track a potential assassin. She flies to Malta, meets with the contact, and hires a boat and crew to smuggle her and the suspect into Italy. Max, history buff, former rock drummer, unintentional ex-pat, and bartender in Malta, needs extra cash so he can return to the States. Hired on the boat as cook, he impresses Alison by discovering what the suspect has in his two huge suitcases...just before the man gives them the slip. This Mediterranean boat trip is no vacation cruise, and it will take quick thinking to avoid potential death while capturing the villain red-handed.