McFitter's Crossing

About the Book

Jake Macklebee is back! And now he's involuntary conscripted again to help solve a mystery in the desert. However, all is not as it seems. There's war on the border, but it seems the border war's coming after him! Jake knows he could ignore what's going on and mind his own business. But there's too much at stake: the town he's responsible for protecting, his friends, his reputation-but most importantly-his life! Fortunately Jake has a knack for criminal investigation. Federal law enforcement and border wars involving organized drug cartel can't stop small town sheriff turned amateur sleuth Jake Macklebee from trying to find out what's going on. And when he does, he learns a little more than he had anticipated, and gets more entangled than he could ever have wished for. So, strange things happening become worse than a bad dream. Now all that's left is to survive, and find his way out of the mess and re-establish peace and security in his home town. Can he do it? This is yet another novel where one's wits and sanity are tested against the tyranny of multiple, darkest, unknown forces.

About the Author

V. William Barrett is an American writer whose first two published novels are "mysteries" that take place in remote regions of the United States southwest. Barrett was raised in the American west, mostly Boise, Idaho, from his elementary through high school years. But later as an adult he lived and worked in Montana, Arizona, California, Washington, Oregon, and Utah. Soon after his father, a history professor whose mentor had been noted Mormon historian Leonard J. Arrington, retired to a rural part of Arizona in 1994, Barrett started spending more and more time at his father's isolated retirement home. An ardent fan of John Nichols' Milagro Beanfield War series, Barrett soon began making notes about community life in the non-reservation Arizona small town. When he combined imaginary characters and made-up settings with the local color, the result ultimately became his first novel, Sticks and Shovels. The hero of what started the Jake Macklebee series is very loosely based on a friend of Barrett's who shares some of the same qualities as Jake Mackleebee. Although Barrett has written what has been called "mystery" fiction, he considers himself first and foremost a literary artist at heart. He received an MFA in creative writing from the University of Arizona in 2001. His professors and advisors included N. Scott Momaday, Fenton Johnson, Robert Houston, and Alison Hawthorne Deming. Barrett was also a one-time student of Robert Olen Butler in the early 1990's. His non-fiction writing and poetry has appeared in a wide range of publications, from literary journals to military magazines. In 2008 pre-publication processing commenced, with the help of I-Universe, for his first nonfiction book, Into the Midst, a collection of essays about road travel and meditations about the individual, personal journey.