Ghost Shadow: Unfinished Sins

by Bob MacKenzie

Just under the surface, even a peaceful Canadian border city has its dark side. The dark streets of Windsor hide secrets in bars, in families, in the shaded corners where rapists hide. In this dark place lies the home of this psychological thriller.

In mid-Eighties Windsor, Vietnamese gangs and Chinese organized crime meet head on in violent turf war as they go after a University of Windsor anthropology professor and $2,000,000 in ancient treasure he stole from China. Meanwhile, a brutal serial rapist and killer terrorizes the city.

Three psychologically damaged women - the professor's wife, his 17 year old daughter, and a private detective - are drawn into this world of brutal psychological terror, raw physical and emotional violence, and international crime and intrigue. Can they survive?

In the tradition of Graham Greene and Elmore Leonard. Working on several levels, this psychological crime thriller is also the story of how these three women cope and ultimately survive their journey into hell.

Payge Turner was considered a good cop. At least she was until she was asked to leave the Windsor Police Force for an unprovoked angry attack on a suspect. Payge has a darkness in her that made her dangerous to work with and difficult to control. Now Payge is a private detective. It's easier to control her darkness when she works alone.

Payge's mind is on the current rash of brutal rape-murders in Windsor when she is hired to investigate the disappearance of 17 year old Susan Markham, the daughter of a respected anthropologist. Susan doesn't fit the rapist's M.O., but Payge begins to suspect something more sinister has happened to this attractive student.

Within days, Payge must cope with the turf war between oriental gangs, stolen Chinese treasure, a father who seems unconcerned that his daughter has been kidnapped, and a client who isn't telling her everything.

Joining forces with her old police partner, Yvonne Laforet, Payge is soon on the trail of the missing woman. What she doesn't realize is that the most frightening thing she'll discover is hidden deep within herself.

270 pages, Paperback

First published September 29, 2010

About the author

Bob MacKenzie has been a full-time self-supporting professional writer in both the commercial and literary fields since 1965. He began his career as a writer, editor, and producer in print and broadcast media while pursuing a literary career. Since the late-Eighties, Bob's concentrated on his literary career, writing short stories, novels, and poetry (including song lyrics), and performing words with music live on stage and in recordings.

Bob grew up in a photo studio in mid-century rural Alberta with artist parents. His father was a professional photographer and musician and his mother a photo technician, colourist, and painter. At a very young age, he was given his own camera. Ever since he's been shooting photographs and writing poems and stories. Raised in this environment, he quickly developed a natural affinity for photography and for the intricacies of language.

Bob's poetry has appeared in nearly 500 journals across North America and as far away as Great Britain, Australia, Greece, India, and Italy. Over the past half-century, Bob has published 20 volumes of poetry and prose-fiction and his writing has appeared in many anthologies around the world.

Bob has received numerous local and international awards for his writing as well as an Ontario Arts Council grant for literature, a Canada Council Grant for performance, and a Fellowship to attend the Summer Literary Seminars in Tbilisi, Georgia.

With the ensemble Poem de Terre, for eighteen years Bob's poetry has been spoken and sung live with original music and the group has released six albums.