PORTLAND, Ore. — Ray Bates Mysteries is home to the 43-year old Bureau veteran, Detective Sgt. John Quincy Bowers, who works the Portland homicide scene and is considered a new-age misfit by his peers; “Blue Butterfly” (ISBN: 1425941362) is the first in a series featuring Bowers.
Bowers, the central character, is an Oregon native and former Pac Ten lineman; he is also a stubborn, old-school cop with a street-hardened addiction to a job he sometimes loves to hate. He is recovering from a recent relationship split where he lost his furniture, a drift boat and most of his motivation. However, his job gets a lot more interesting and his motivation resurfaces when he meets his new partner, Minola Raye.
Raye is Betty Boop with a nine millimeter on her hip. She’s a curvy, gung-ho, New Orleans Creole who can make a man’s middle-age crisis something to look forward to. She drives like Evel Knievel, shuns Bowers’ greasy-spoon pig-outs, and challenges his white-loaf philosophy with the zeal of a terrier in a tub of garter snakes as they track down the City of Rose’s A-list killers.
The “Blue Butterfly” plot tracks a call girl’s killer through the sleazy and sex-steeped streets of Portland’s underground. During the hunt, Bowers and Raye uncover a police bureau prostitution ring and bag a political, prime-time player with an appetite for S&M.
Mystery buffs and true-crime junkies, alike, will latch on to this new, northwest voice in the police-procedural genre and look forward to the upcoming sequel.
Bates’ background and experience as a criminal investigator working with law enforcement and the criminal-justice system provide the foundation for a series of police procedurals with hard-hitting realism. The series is tempered with sexy romance and fleshed-out characters.
Bates is an Oregon native who divides his time between Portland and the Oregon Coast where he writes the Bowers’ series. Fans can also look forward to more original sleuthing in upcoming sequels in the John Bowers’ Series.
To learn more about the author and other publications, visit:
http://www.raybatesmysteries.com
[tags]Author Ray Bates, Police Procedurals, crime novels, GSK Consulting[/tags]
