Skeleton Run by John L.DeBoer-Review, Interview and Book Tour

Skeleton Run by John L. DeBoer- Review, Interview and Book Tour

Skeleton Run

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SKELETON RUN by John L .Deboer

About the book: Release Date April 14, 2015

Add SKELETON RUN to your GOODREADS shelf

Twenty years ago, four teenage boys left a baby behind in a crushed car after they caused the tragic accident that took the mother’s life. Ever since, they’ve guarded the secret that would’ve ruined their lives and destroyed their future careers. But when one of them succumbs to illness, a blackmailer makes contact, and the survivors realize that, somehow, someone else knows. Now, everything that matters to them is at stake.

Las Vegas billionaire Wendell Logan is pursuing the role of political kingmaker, and he’s selected his unsuspecting king: Alan Granger, governor of Pennsylvania. Granger confesses his closet skeleton to Logan, but the tycoon has invested too much time and money into Granger’s future presidential campaign to let him and his old friends endanger Logan’s power play.

It’s time to run.

•••••••••••••

REVIEW: SKELETON RUN is a contemporary, adult suspense storyline from author John L. Deboer. Told from first person point of view-Dr. Jim Dawson- and several third person perspectives SKELETON RUN follows four friends who twenty two years earlier, during their senior year of high school, were involved in a car accident that killed a young woman abandoning her eighteen month old son alone and helpless on a cold winter’s night. Promising never to speak of that night, our four friends will eventually find themselves the victims of blackmail when a deathbed conversation reveals too much information, and one of their own confesses the truth during a run for political office.

John Deboer builds a story of intrigue and suspense using personal tragedy and guilt to reveal the different experiences and resulting fall out for each of our four storyline ‘heroes’, and I use the term hero rather loosely. We follow the successes and failures from physician, and football hero: to governor, and a young life cut short by a deadly disease; lives will be threatened and lost when blackmail and politics take center stage in a struggle for power and the ultimate control of man by the political elite.

The world building follows four high school age students over a twenty two year period wherein the memories of that fateful night burrow into the sub conscious of each man but not everyone experiences the mind numbing guilt in similar ways. While three of the men are unable to forget about the child that was left behind, another presses forward as though nothing had happened to change the direction of his own life and that of his future plans.

John Deboer’s character development is thorough without the use of over the top romantic descriptive narration; their personal demons rarely ride close to the surface but the guilt is ever present and not easy to forget. The past will become their present when the future is clouded in what ifs and the possibility of what is to come.
SKELETON RUN is a well written storyline of mystery and suspense. The premise will keep your attention until the very end; the characters are colorful, intriguing and charismatic. John L. Deboer builds an intense, imaginative and fateful storyline that could have been ripped from today’s headline news.

Copy supplied by the publisher.

Reviewed by Sandy

excerpt

 

Chapter 1
Late February 1995
Richmond, Vermont
Jeanne Favreau kissed her eighteen-month-old son and put him in his crib for the night. Exhausted from her long day at Bolton Valley, she flopped into her own bed across the room. Sufficient snow on the popular ski resort’s slopes kept the snack bar busy on Saturdays. At least she had the next day off. She quickly fell asleep.
The baby cried, and Jeanne’s eyes snapped open. No light crept through the blinds. She turned on the nightstand lamp and glanced at the clock radio: 10:15. Crap! She stepped to the crib, where Timmy stood gripping the side rail and emitting unhappy squawks.
“What’s the matter, sweetie?” Jeanne lifted him over the rail and held him to her shoulder while checking his diaper. Dry and empty. Then she felt his forehead. Hot.
Oh, Christ! Another ear infection? Probably. With a sigh, she carried Timmy into the bathroom and took the bottle of Tylenol suspension from the medicine cabinet. She closed the bathtub drain and turned on the water. She went into the small kitchen and deposited him into his highchair, where he rubbed his right ear with a fist.
“I know, Timmy. You don’t feel good,” Jeanne cooed, “but Mommy will make it better.” She opened a cabinet drawer, got a spoon, and poured the liquid Tylenol into it. The pediatrician had said he could have a full teaspoon. Unfortunately, Jeanne had become experienced dealing with ear infections. After successfully getting her child to take the medicine, she picked him up and returned to the bathroom.
From the back seat of the Toyota Land Cruiser, I gazed out the window at the passing forest. Though clouds intermittently obscured the face of the half moon, enough light bathed the landscape to provide a contrast between the smooth, untrampled snow and the skeletal stands of hardwood trees rising above it.
My buddies and I had taken full advantage of the good conditions on the slopes, and with the end of the season looming, we wanted to double down and continue skiing into the evening under the lights. But our social director had another idea in mind.
Alan Granger chuckled as he piloted the SUV down the Bolton Valley access road. “Hot babes in a hot tub. Doesn’t get any better than that. Didn’t I tell you? Stick with the Grange if you want to party? Bring your swim trunks just in case? I’m definitely going to give that Tammy a call tomorrow.” Tall and lanky, with a shock of unruly dark brown hair, a handsome face, and a gregarious personality, Granger was well known in our high school as a chick magnet. And starring as a wide receiver on the football team hadn’t hurt.
Bob Kretchman, sitting next to me, grunted and took a gulp from his beer can. With his intimidating size and ferocious tackling exploits for that same team, his nickname of “Crushman” had evolved naturally. He scratched his scalp through his blond crew cut. “Yeah, it was fun. But I can’t see us taking this any further. They’re college chicks, dude.”
“Get me one of those Buds, will you?” Granger said. As I reached into the Styrofoam cooler behind me, he continued, “What difference does a year make, Crush? In seven months, we’ll be in college, too. So we lie a little to get laid. You know, like we usually do.” He laughed again.
I popped the can and handed it to our driver.
“What about you, Jimmy?” he asked me. “Going to give Green Bikini a call? You two seemed to be getting it on pretty good.”
I smiled, thinking of those luscious tits practically rubbing against me as we “got to know each other” in the spa’s swirling water. The girls, Pi Beta Phi sorority sisters, were sophomores at the University of Vermont, all from out of state. They were staying in the ski condo belonging to the parents of Granger’s date for the weekend. Unfortunately, the father and his wife were also there, so we had to confine the frolic to the public hot tub. But we’d all said we would like to get together again in the near future—hopefully to take our newfound “friendships” to the next level.
“The lighting helped,” I replied, “since I don’t look ancient like the rest of you guys. But I don’t think my face could pass for a college stud in the light of day.”
Tom Webster faced me from the front passenger seat. He twiddled his index fingers in his cheeks and grinned. “Mr. Dawson, she’d just think you’re cute. Go for it, man. Sometimes you gotta go for the long ball.” The team’s quarterback turned his broad shoulders back to the front and nudged the driver with his elbow.
“Amen to that,” Granger responded.
“Hey, Jim,” Kretchman added, “you can’t always dance your way through the line. Somebody like me could be waiting for you, stop you in your tracks.”
I laughed at the ribbing, since I was used to it. They had been my friends since grade school. Though in good shape, able to hold my own in the weight room, and certainly not short in stature, I was the “little” kid among them and the youngest by four months. Not to mention my young-looking face. “Well,” I said, returning the linebacker’s grin, “if there’s a hole, I’ll be sure to find it.”
“Good one, Jimmy!” Granger laughed and took a pull from his can.
“And,” I said, “you seem to have forgotten that ninety-five-yard touchdown run I made against Essex. The Burlington Free Press certainly thought it was noteworthy. Didn’t the article say it was a school record? And how about those two—I repeat, two—kickoff returns for TDs against BFA? I can go long, too.” I gave him a light punch in the arm.
“Yeah, you’re a legend in your own mind,” Granger said over his shoulder. “Anyway, those girls do open up some possibilities.”
The car came to a stop at the bottom of the hill before turning right onto US 2. The exit for I-89, the route we’d take back to Burlington, lay just a few miles ahead.
At eleven p.m., after bathing Timmy in tepid water, Jeanne checked his temperature again with the rectal thermometer. 103.6! His fever had risen a full degree. Listless and lethargic, Timmy was no longer crying. Not a good sign.
She placed him on the bed while she quickly dressed and put on her parka. Then she wrapped a blanket around Timmy, picked him up, and went out the trailer door. Along with her child, the decrepit singlewide was all she had left to remind her of her ex-boyfriend, who’d run off as soon as she revealed the positive pregnancy test.
She secured Timmy in the rear-facing infant car seat of her beat-up Yugo and then drove out of the trailer park. The medical center in Burlington, just twenty minutes or so to the west, was her destination. Richmond didn’t have a hospital. But that’s what my baby needs, and soon.
The heavy beat of Meat Loaf erupted from the Land Cruiser’s CD player as snowflakes began to hit the windshield.
Granger turned on the wipers. “Where the hell did this come from?”
“Some freak snow flurry,” Webster said from the shotgun seat.
“More like a freakin’ storm.”
I leaned forward to peer through the windshield. The headlights’ illumination reflected back at us from the fluffy crystals. We appeared to be the only car on the road, so playing Follow the Leader wouldn’t help us pick our way through the wall of white. Roadside lights were non-existent.
“Better slow down,” I said. As Kretchman had implied in his metaphor, I was usually the cautious one. I preferred to call it the “voice of reason.”
As the car rounded a turn, Webster yelled, “Watch out!”
At the same moment, I saw it as well. A dim red glow penetrated the heavy snowfall directly in front of us. A car’s taillight.
Granger tromped on the brakes, but the SUV skidded on the slick asphalt. “Oh, Jesus!” he shouted, and we all watched helplessly, knowing a collision was unavoidable. The heavy Land Cruiser slammed into the rear of the much smaller car, sending it careening off the road and into a stout maple tree.
“Shit!” Granger regained control of the SUV, pulled onto the shoulder, and put the car in park but left the engine running. He scrambled out of the vehicle and headed toward the stricken sedan, his open parka flapping.
The rest of us followed. Snow crunched beneath my boots as I hurried to the car. The initial shock of the collision became full-blown panic as I feared the worst. The Yugo’s right headlight had escaped damage and sent its beam onto the cornfield beyond the tree. The front of the driver’s side of the car had received the full force of the impact. Snow continued to fall, its insulation imposing an eerie quiet. Except for our heavy breathing and the slight tick of the Yugo’s engine, no sound reached my ears.
We gathered around Granger and looked through the shattered driver’s side window. Faint light from the moon revealed a young woman pinned to her seat by the steering column. She wasn’t moving.
“Are you all right?” Granger spoke through the window as he tried and failed to open the door. No response came from the woman who appeared to be, at best, unconscious. “Bob, give the door a try.”
While Kretchman put his bulk into the effort, I went around to the other side and opened the front passenger door. The dome light came on, illuminating the woman, and my fear became real.
The collision had driven the dashboard assembly, including the collapsible steering column, into her chest. Her unblinking eyes stared ahead as if expressing shock at the sudden catastrophe. Med school was still more than four years away for me, but I didn’t need medical training to diagnose the obvious.
Still, I felt for a pulse in her cool, lifeless wrist. “She’s dead,” I announced.
“Oh, my God!” Granger wailed. “What’re we going to do?” He banged his fist on the roof of the car. “Shit!”
From behind me, Webster said, “Look in the backseat, Jimmy.”
Though I’d thought my despair couldn’t get any worse, it climbed to a new level.
Webster opened the rear door, and I leaned in. The infant car seat lay askew but still restrained by the seat belt. The child in it was motionless, eyes closed. Oh, Jesus, no! I put my ear close to the baby’s mouth, and the sound of rhythmic breathing rewarded me. Thank God! I didn’t see any apparent injuries. Granger and Kretchman came around the car.
“I think the baby’s okay,” I said as I backed out and stood upright. “Call 9-1-1 on your car phone, Al.”
“Yeah… all right… good idea.” He started for his car then came back to us. “Oh, man. We should think about this first. I killed somebody, for Christ’s sake! Vehicular homicide is what they call it.” He shook his head. “I’m in big trouble, guys.”
“It was an accident,” Kretchman offered. “Bad weather conditions, slippery road. That car came out of nowhere.”
“And it only had the one taillight,” Webster added. “We’ll back you up, man.”
“Except they’ll say I was going too fast for the conditions, since I rear-ended her. Slam dunk there. And I was drinking. Unlike you guys, I’m eighteen, so I’m screwed both ways. I’m not allowed to drink, but legally I’m an adult. I am totally fucked!”
I couldn’t argue with that assessment, and apparently, the others couldn’t either as indecision paralyzed all of us. I glanced at the baby. We had to do something for it and soon.
“Even if I can stay out of jail and my old man doesn’t disown me, there goes law school. Think I could get into Georgetown or any other top school with this on my record?” Granger put his hands on the sides of his head. “Oh, man. What am I going to do?”
“So let’s get the hell out of here,” Webster said. “You gotta make that call because of the kid, but do it when we’re on the road and keep it anonymous.”
“I think the cops can trace those calls,” Granger replied. “Can’t take that chance. I need to find a pay phone.”
“What about the baby?” I asked. “We can’t just leave it here. If something happens to—”
“Uh-oh, car coming,” Kretchman said.
I looked to the east. The trees lit up from an approaching car that had not yet rounded the curve. We watched as the car came into view and then reached our location. I held my breath, but it continued past us without even slowing.
Maybe the snow had obscured the driver’s view. Maybe something else had distracted him. Maybe he had issues of his own and didn’t want to get involved in our problem. Whatever—his appearance on the scene emphasized our precarious position.
“We better get going before a Good Samaritan or a state trooper comes by,” Granger said.
“The baby?” I asked again.
Granger looked at the sleeping infant. “He’s got a warm blanket.” He reached in to tuck the wool fabric around the kid. “It’s not that cold. Gotta be above freezing.” He gazed at the sky. “And the snow is letting up.” The panic in his eyes told me whose welfare he was really considering. “The kid’ll be okay. He’s not even crying, Jimmy. I’ll call 9-1-1 as soon as we hit town. Twenty minutes, tops.” He headed to the Land Cruiser. “C’mon, guys, let’s book.”
Kretchman must have sensed my hesitation. “Jimmy?”
I didn’t know what to say.
Webster grabbed my arm. “C’mon, man. I don’t like this any better than you do, but we’re all in big shit here. Al’s right. This is the only way out for us.”
It wasn’t right to just up and bolt, leaving the mess behind us. Okay, it was Al’s mess, really. But Webster had a point. We were all involved. Even though I had only been a bystander, I wasn’t innocent. I had been drinking, too, had even given the driver a beer. Because of us, a woman lay dead, and her baby had lost its mother. A terrible thing.
Guilt was one thing. I’d have that regardless. Suffering real-world consequences was another matter. In the short term, I’d be grounded for sure. But I could imagine how this incident could forever mar my reputation. I’d be one of “those boys”—the drunken teenagers on a joyride who killed a woman. And Al, my buddy, was right. He would be in a shit-pot full of trouble, legal and otherwise, if this got out.
Self-defense and loyalty finally won the debate. We could do nothing for the woman now, and the baby would be fine, I told myself. I leaned in once more to check the baby and made sure the blanket was secured around his sleeping form. I closed the door and said, “Okay, let’s go,” then followed the others to the car.


 

Interview

TRC: Hi John and welcome to The Reading Café. Congratulations on the release of SKELETON RUN.

We would like to start with some background information. Would you please tell us something about yourself?

Follow John: Goodreads / Website/ Facebook / Twitter/ RAP

 

John L DeboerJohn: I was born in Long Island, spent my childhood in New Jersey, then moved to Burlington, Vermont for high school. Then college and med school in the same city. After that was my surgical training, followed by three years in the Medical Corps. Then I left Uncle Sam for private practice. Thirty years later, I retired and started a new career as a writer. I enjoy cooking, films and film history, playing tennis, politics (I’m a junkie), and the amazing wonders of the cosmos. And, of course, reading.

TRC: Who or what influenced your career in writing?

John: My parents, both highly literate and authors themselves as sidelines (non-fiction) had to be my most influential motivators. When I gave them a school essay I wrote for them to critique, I could always depend on their opinions. My high school English teacher, Miss Dyke (yes, that was her name), was old school (literally!) and drilled the points of grammar, sentence structure, and punctuation into me. I’ve always enjoyed putting sentences and paragraphs together to make a point. While my surgical career did not allow for much literary expression, or the time to indulge in it, I kept my hand in by writing professional articles for surgical journals and writing the family Christmas letter. Friends and family recipients of these seemed to like my quirky prose and would occasionally suggest I write a book. So I did! And I’ve been writing novels ever since.

Skeleton RunTRC: SKELETON RUN is your April 2015 release. Would you please tell us something about the premise?

John: The Supreme Court decisions that currently allow billionaires to finance presidential campaigns was the starting point in my idea for this novel. I wondered how far someone would go to foster – and protect – this investment. Including murder? In “The Godfather,” Michael Corleone said to Kay, when she sneered at his explanation of his father being no worse than a powerful senator, Kay replied, “Don’t be naïve, Michael. Senators don’t have people killed.” And Michael said, “Now who’s being naïve?” When the stakes are high, who really knows? “Seven Days in May,” “No Way Out,” and “Absolute Power” are three films that touch on this subject. Fascinating – and believable, in my view. Anyway, I start out with three high school seniors, friends and members of the football team, who cause a tragic accident. Not wanting to get caught, they flee and guard the secret. Twenty years later they are snug in their adult careers, when the secret gets exposed and a blackmailer surfaces. One of those teens is now the governor of Pennsylvania, and the man a Las Vegas billionaire has decided will be the man he’ll put in the White House. But because of the blackmail attempt, the governor has to divulge his closet skeleton to his benefactor who decides that, with all the effort he’d expended to make the governor a viable candidate, he won’t be stopped now. Anyone with knowledge of that long-ago tragedy must not be allowed to reveal it. And that sets up the conflict for the rest of the novel.

TRC: What challenges or difficulties (research, logistics) did you encounter writing this particular story?

John: Because I was creating this fictional campaign with fictional players, I couldn’t set the story in the past or even present. It had to be in the near future. But, knowing how long it takes from writing a novel to getting it in print, I still had a problem in this regard. I needed a governor of a state that was important electorally, but not hugely covered by the national press. So I picked Pennsylvania. I happened to have lived there for a number of years, so I was familiar with it. But speaking of fictional characters, I wanted to use real-person Karl Rove in a small part; my publisher didn’t allow that. So I had to work around it. All of the settings in the book I was relatively familiar with, and that didn’t present much difficulty. I just had to make sure that what I described as being extant in 1995 when the story begins was accurate.

TRC: Did your career as a surgeon in the U.S. Army Medical Corps impact the premise of any of your storylines? If so, how?

John: I’ve written other novels in which a surgeon was the protagonist. And they’ve sometimes done their training in the Army. Write what you know? In this one, the main character is a pediatrician, university-trained. But medical expertise plays a role in most of my stories. In this one, it acts only as background, and in the two novels I’ve written since, none of the characters are physicians. So perhaps, unlike Robin Cook, I’m expanding my horizons!

TRC: How do you keep the plot unpredictable without sacrificing content and believability?

John: In “Skeleton Run,” this proved to be a tricky problem. It took some doing to save the reveal for the right time. And it did sacrifice some word count!

TRC: Do you believe the cover image plays a deciding factor for many readers in the process of selecting a book or new series to read?

John: I’m very pleased with what the artist came up with for the cover. I submitted a list of elements I thought were important based on my vision, but she came up with her own idea based on her knowledge of the story. And frankly, I think she nailed it. The cover is what attracts the eye, so that’s a start. But if there’s no there, there, a cover won’t get beyond that. Personally, although I love this cover, I think covers are overrated. I’ve seen really bland covers of top-notch books by bestsellers. Okay, they’re bestsellers; a blank white cover and the author’s name would probably be enough. But I think you know what I mean.

TRC: When writing a storyline, do the characters direct the writing or do you direct the characters?

John: Good question! It has to be both. I write personalities into the characters, who then must act in keeping with them. The writer then has the option of allowing their personae to direct the action, or thwart them via other characters. And who will do what is the challenge. Not the why, because that should have been established.

TRC: The mark of a good writer is to pull the reader into the storyline so that they experience the emotions along with the characters. What do you believe a writer must do to make this happen? Where do you believe writer’s fail in this endeavor?

John: I think the key thing is to present a situation with which the reader can identify. Not necessarily from personal experience, but from expectation, if the scene/characters has been set up properly. If the emotions of a scene aren’t logical – Why is she laughing for no reason? – then the scene fails. Proper preparation is essential. No shortcuts allowed if an emotional response is important to the scene – and it should be!

TRC: Do you listen to music while writing? If so, does the style of music influence the storyline direction? Characters?

John: No, I don’t listen to music. I usually have the TV on in my man-cave (the garage) to serve as background “white noise,” though. And it’s usually some talk show, so crescendos and decrescendos won’t affect my writing mood.

TRC: What three things would you like to accomplish in the next five years?

JOHN: Number one, survive for five years! Number two, get more widely known for my novels. Number three, build that dream house at the beach.

TRC: Have you collaborated with any other authors/writers? If not, have you considered such an enterprise?

John: I tried writing a novel with another author once, but that didn’t work out. Delegation of responsibilities proved to be too difficult.

TRC: Many authors bounce ideas and information with other authors or friends and family. With whom do you bounce ideas?

John: I bounce ideas about new projects off my wife and a very few friends. Two, actually. I workshop all my novels in an online writing community, posting one chapter at a time. I find the feedback from this invaluable.

TRC: What do you believe is the biggest misconception people have about authors?

John: I don’t really know. I find only positive responses when I meet strangers and tell them I’m a writer. That usually piques their curiosity and starts a conversation.

TRC: What is something that few, if any people, know about you?

John: If I told you, I’d have to kill you.

TRC: On what are you currently working?

John: My WIP is a story about the ISIS threat to Americans, tentatively titled, “When the Reaper Comes.”

TRC: Would you like to add anything else?

John: A big thank you for participating in my “Skeleton Run” book tour!

LIGHTNING ROUND

Favorite food – Italian (anything but calamari)

Favorite dessert – pies (any kind except for pumpkin)

Favorite TV show – That’s a toughie. Hmm. Okay, “House of Cards”

Last movie I saw – “The Wolf of Wall Street”

Dark or milk chocolate – Dark

Secret celebrity crush – C’mon

Last vacation destination – The Cloisters, Sea Island, Georgia

Pets – Two cats

Last book read – Lee Child’s “Gone Tomorrow”

Pet peeve – Well, I think it’s when someone always starts out answering a
question with “Well,…”

TRC: Thank you John for taking the time to answer our questions. Congratulations on the release of SKELETON RUN. We wish you all the best

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10 thoughts on “Skeleton Run by John L.DeBoer-Review, Interview and Book Tour

  1. thanks for the review Sandy. Looks like another great read.

    Congratulations John on the new release. C’mon…you won’t tell us about your secret celebrity crush???

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