Silver Moon Rising: Fact vs. Fiction

From autocrats to plutocrats to the guy next door, everyone is lying. ‘What about novelists, AMP?’ Absolutely, without a doubt. But they’re not lying to hoodwink us. Rather, they’re lying to create fiction, to entertain us.

An earlier North Noir post noted that every work of fiction sits on a fact-fiction continuum. On one end of the continuum there is pure fact; on the other, pure invention. Much of any novel sits somewhere in between. Take Silver Moon Rising (Detective Bourque Book Two). What facts bleed into its fiction? The main murderee, Daniel John Fitzgerald (Dan-Dan), is loosely based on John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr. (John-John), who died tragically in a 1999 plane crash. Dan-Dan Fitzgerald’s best friend, Chase Heaney, is loosely based on Paul Watson of Greenpeace. However, the resemblances are, as they say, incidental. Fitzgerald and Heaney are characters in a whodunit – aka, an entertainment with teeth.

Silver Moon Rising probes political activism and loss, not only the loss of human lives, but the impending loss of an entire species — the right whale. New Englanders have been coming to terms with whale mortality for centuries, as evinced by Herman Melville’s Moby Dick (1851). In Melville’s tale, when humans and whales collide, things unravel. As they do in Silver Moon Rising.

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Publishing News: Release Date for Bourque #2, Silver Moon Rising

SILVER MOON RISING, the second novel in the Detective Bourque series set in contemporary New England, will be released by Stark House Press on SEPTEMBER 4, 2024.

Lieutenant Ivy Bourque of the Cape & Islands Detective Unit is called to a Martha’s Vineyard ferry at midnight. The estranged son of Massachusetts’ most famous political family is dead.

Was the victim, Daniel John Fitzgerald, murdered, or was he assassinated? Dan-Dan Fitzgerald was a preeminent eco-activist and whale advocate. His death triggers more deaths. Numerous suspects arise, among them the ferry crew, a megalomaniacal State governor, former Marines, a federal political lobbyist, and anti-whale shipping companies.

The investigation falters until Bourque realizes the key lies below the surface of Vineyard Sound, which leads to a tangled web centered on Cuttyhunk Island off Cape Cod.

“Impressive series launch. Fans of intelligent procedurals will hope for a long series run.” – Publishers Weekly on The Color Red, Detective Bourque Book One

Silver Moon Rising, Potter’s sequel to The Color Red (2023), portrays Bourque as an increasingly confident, intuitive detective, giving plenty of room for this burgeoning series to grow.” – Booklist, the best book reviews for libraries, the best books for book clubs, published by the American Library Association (ALA)

Book Two in the Detective Ivy Bourque Series

PUBLISHING NEWS: The second novel in the DETECTIVE IVY BOURQUE series will be published by Stark House Press, CA, USA. RELEASE DATE: September 2024. Title/cover reveal in Summer 2024.

BOURQUE NUMBER TWO: Another son of Massachusetts’ most famous political family is dead: Daniel John Fitzgerald. Enter Lieutenant Bourque of the Cape & Islands Detective Unit. Was Fitzgerald murdered, or was he assassinated? The victim was a preeminent eco-activist and whale advocate. His death triggers more deaths. In Bourque’s domain, most homicides are personal; assassinations, on the other hand, are political. Her team unravels a tangled web which leads to Cuttyhunk Island, Cape Cod.

“Impressive series launch. Fans of intelligent procedurals will hope for a long series run.” ~ Publishers Weekly

Click here for information on the series opener, The Color Red.

Stark House has optioned the third book in the series.