Prick
DL Hammons
Publication date: December 12th 2023
Genres: Suspense, Thriller, Young Adult

People are dying under mysterious circumstances in the small town of New Haven. And the city’s best hope of uncovering the truth rests with a troubled teen and the girl who can’t stand him.

Cassie Underwood’s life is shattered when her younger sister dies in a freak car accident. In her grief, Cassie unfairly blames her sister’s constant companion—Taggart McGill—a boy with a sketchy past and abrasive personality. As Cassie attempts to recover from the loss, she struggles to honor her late sister’s memory by befriending the person she resents most.

Things get complicated when Cassie overhears a fellow student asking Taggart to convince the police another death in the accident had nothing to do with the crash at all. Taggart surprisingly agrees and a suspicious Cassie decides to accompany him in his snooping. She soon learns everything she knows about Taggart is wrong… and he has insight into things that link the car accident to other suspicious deaths in their close-knit community.

Now it seems there’s only one thing keeping Cassie’s name off the growing list of victims—finding out who Taggart McGill really is.

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EXCERPT:

“Didn’t my sister ever tell you that the way you dress is a bit clichéd? I mean, look at you. The isolated loner, the social outcast, in a dark hoodie? Really?”

I wasn’t sure what changed, maybe something in his posture, but he seemed to soften.

“It might be cliché, but it’s practical.”

“How so?”

Taggart pulled a pair of white earbuds from inside the sweatshirt and plugged them into his ears, then pulled up his hood, which completely covered his face, blocking me—and everything else—out.

I leaned over the edge of the table, pulled back his hood and yanked out his buds. He didn’t resist.

“Point taken.”

“Obviously not.”

Author Bio:

DL Hammons wrote his first piece of fiction decades ago … to impress a girl (it was moderately successful), and he hasn’t looked back.

He wrote a script for a 15-minute audiotape in the style of old radio shows (i.e., Little Orphan Annie, Dick Tracy), for which his group received an A+ and he was praised for the originality of the story. He was hooked. He later joined the school newspaper and made a name for himself authoring sports articles and feature pieces.

Unfortunately, the seed planted in high school would lay dormant for decades while DL faced the realities of adult life. College exams, school loans, early morning alarms and late-night dinners, business trips, heart-stopping love, dirty diapers, mortgages, coaching clinics, scholarship applications, and everything else that tends to induce follicle disembarkation and enlarged prostates. It wasn’t until his children had flown the coop that “the itch” returned, and he had the time to give it the attention it deserved.

Growing up as a military brat, DL moved around quite a bit as a kid. After graduating from LSU and raising a family in several southern states, he now makes his home in Central Arkansas where he has spent the last dozen years perfecting his voice, splitting his writing time between YA and Adult Mystery/Suspense. Other than being an author, DL claims that the most interesting thing about him is that he lacks a sense of smell. Other passions include (but are not limited to) his family (including his two mini-Australian Shepards) music, movies, video gaming, and cool weather camping.

DL is represented by Tina P. Schwartz of the Purcell Agency.

Knight Rise and Fallen Knight are part of his adult Silent Sleuth series, and PRICK is his first Young Adult book – part of the Taggart McGill Mystery series.

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