I spent 27 years as a computer analyst and have done some free-lance technical writing. I have a BA degree in history. Learn mote about Len here:     His Website     His Facebook Page

New Title(s) from Len Dawson

 
Devil's Alibi now available in PRINT!

Click on the thumbnail(s) above to learn more about the book(s) listed.

   

	In this somewhat-dark, slightly-erotic crime story a disillusioned mother, her inept husband, her teenage son, her husband’s sleazy friend, and a hit man who’s attracted to her, each hatch a plot to exploit some illicit cash. As they interact, they unravel each other’s plans, committing crimes, making new plans, leaving dead bodies in their wake, and eventually coming together for a final confrontation.
	Excerpt Word Count: 12,500 Pages to Print: 40 File Format: PDF                  Price: $3.99
	When something bad happens in a nice place, we try to rationalize it. The nicer the place, the more we want reality to fit our expectations. Ithaca, New York is a place of exceptional beauty; a place of gorges and waterfalls; a place tainted by kidnapping and murder. Try to solve both of the mysteries presented in this whodunit before the solutions are revealed in the Agatha Christie-style closing scene. Sift through the lies and deceptions alongside small town lawyer Andy Lee and his wife, as they work against a deadline, facing dangerous people caught in increasingly desperate situations. Andy is neither the richest, nor the strongest, nor the smartest man in the world. He isn’t mired in a messy divorce. He wasn’t in a special-forces unit and he’s not a government agent. He’s a hard-working, unassuming, middle-age lawyer who loves his wife and believes in justice.
Reviews:    by Jezebel Jorge    In-House Reviews	Excerpt Word Count: 70,000 Pages to Print: 223 File Format: PDF                  Price: $4.99
	ORDER THE PRINT BOOK! (ISBN #978-1-61950-025-9) $20.98 ($ 14.99 + $5.99 P&H—applies to US shipping ONLY. Outside US? Email us to get exact cost) Disclaimer: please allow 4-6 weeks for delivery. To order the print, please click on the red button below. PLEASE NOTE: The button on the left will take you to a secure checkout at PayPal (PayPal account NOT required).

 

EXCERPTS

Everyone's On the Take

Celia got a good look at him when he came through the door just before eleven on a Thursday night, the streetlight outside the bar putting a spotlight on him, as though he was some kind of movie star. This guy was big; probably six feet tall, and heavy but solid-looking, like a football player. And he walked like one of those ex-military guys, as though he was looking for trouble, nothing at all like her husband Jerome who was waiting for them in the apartment next door. She tried to imagine Jerome overpowering this guy but she couldn’t do it.     The stranger sat on a stool near the door at the other end of the room. She watched him in the mirror behind the bar so he wouldn’t catch her looking. The bartender, one of her husband’s no-good acquaintances, was a dark-skinned, little man named Roy, who looked flabby but wasn’t fat, looked like he was forty but was only about thirty. When Roy tried to pour the guy’s drink from a bottle sitting on the bar, the guy put his hand over his glass and said something she couldn’t hear. Then, after a short exchange, the guy tossed a bill on the bar. Roy snatched it up then poured the guy’s drink from a bottle he took from a cupboard above the bar where he hid the good stuff.     Roy was always leaning on something, and now he was leaning on the bar talking to the new guy and they were both looking at her. Then the big, good-looking man was coming her way. When Jerome told her they could make some easy cash, she agreed to do it because money was short again this month, and she didn’t want their son Joey sleeping on the street. But now that the guy was on his way over, taking his time and checking her out, she wasn’t so sure it was a good idea.     He came and stood next to her holding his drink. She watched him in the mirror while he looked her over, his eyes lingering for a while on her legs then again on her cleavage, studying her as though he was going to buy her, not just rent her.     The ice in her drink had melted, diluting the cheap whiskey, but she held the glass with both hands so he wouldn’t see them shaking. Her instincts were telling her to back out before the plan went south and things got dangerous. That’s what she was expecting because Jerome always managed to screw things up, but she wanted to know if she was still attractive, wanted to know if this new guy would pay a hundred dollars just for a few minutes with her.     He leaned an elbow on the bar, twisting around so he was facing her, then said, “You need a new drink,” in a deep, steady voice as he took her glass from her. She looked him over when he turned away and held her glass up to get Roy’s attention. He looked even bigger up close. She thought about him lying on her, using her for his pleasure, and wondered what that would feel like. He’d be heavy, and strong enough to do whatever he wanted to her, and the stubble on his cheeks would give her a rash, where it rubbed against her skin. Then she saw he was watching her in the mirror and she looked away to hide her embarrassment.     He held her glass up and told her that cheap whiskey was better served cold, but when Roy came over, he told Roy to get her a clean glass and fill it with the stuff he was having. As he turned sideways to face her again, and moved a little closer, Celia hoped she was getting a break from the bad lighting because this guy looked younger than her, maybe as young as forty, and in good shape too, with wide shoulders and a narrow waist.     Roy winked at her when he brought her drink, putting a key on the counter next to it, and not bothering to hide it. It gave her the creeps the way he always acted like they shared some dirty little secret, and him with that shriveled up skin over his eye where some customer cut him with a broken bottle a few years back. The new guy had been looking at her legs when Roy winked at her. That was good because it was hard enough playing the part without having to explain Roy winking at her.     The guy held a hand out to her. “The name’s Vic.”     He seemed pretty sure of himself. She liked that in a guy, even if this was business, which meant he didn’t have to worry about getting shot down. She put her hand in his, gently, tentatively, barely touching him, dragging her fingertips lightly over his skin as she let go. The thought of those big, rough hands on her thighs stirred up feelings she’d never known with her husband Jerome, an unfamiliar, urgent desire that left her feeling edgy and confused, but wanting more.     Vic nodded at her drink. “You got someplace we can go when you finish that?”     He knew she had a place lined up. The key was right there on the bar in front of him. Still, it was nice of the guy to pretend it was his move. She made a show of picking the key up off the bar when she stood up, rising too fast and getting dizzy because she wasn’t used to good whiskey.     The guy followed her outside and across the ally to the wooden staircase hanging precariously on the building next door. She had trouble keeping her balance on the stairs because of the booze. It didn’t help that the guy was coming up the stairs right behind her, and he could probably see her panties. That was another one of Jerome’s bright ideas; “Wear something short,” he said. Yeah, easy for him to say; he wasn’t going to have some stranger looking up his skirt.     Celia turned on the overhead light as she stepped inside the apartment, relieved when she finally got the key to work. She was supposed to lead Vic toward the bedroom, past the hall closet where Jerome would be waiting for them, but then Vic came up behind her, putting his hands on her shoulders, kissing her neck. She let her head fall back against his chest. It felt hard, like leaning against a wall. Then his hands were sliding down her arms, across her stomach, along her thighs and up to her breasts; gently at first, like spiders crawling on her skin; his hands getting rougher and more urgent as his breathing came faster and harder, moist and hot on her neck.     Celia broke away because she couldn’t stand there while her husband watched Vic feeling her up. She started to walk toward the closet, Vic following close behind her, just the way Roy and Jerome had planned it. Jerome would leap out of the closet behind Vic and subdue him, and even though Vic was a big tough-looking lamb being led to an unlikely slaughter, waiting for it to happen, and leading him into it, made her heart beat so fast and hard she was afraid Vic would hear it.                                                                           Back to Everyone's On the Take

The Devil's Alibi

THE KIDNAPPING                                                     Friday Night, October 4th      Two men in a brown van with rust spreading along its rocker panels like a skin disease watched Sara Jennings pause on the sidewalk outside her friend’s house.      They were too far away to hear the woman in the doorway comment, “Sara, your mother doesn’t want you walking home alone after dark. She said for you to wait here, that she’ll come pick you up.”      Sara didn’t mean to sound irritated. It just came out that way when she told her friend’s mother, “I’m gonna walk home.” If she sounded angry, it was her parents’ fault for treating her like a child. After all, she was sixteen years old. “I’ll be home before she leaves.”      Although Eastwood Avenue runs straight as an arrow for three blocks, curving gently to the right then sloping downhill, Sara could almost see her house five blocks away. When she heard the opening music to her friend’s favorite television show, Sara told her friend to go back inside so she wouldn’t miss anything, then she left for home.      Half a block away she slowed to play a game of hopscotch, the faded chalk lines barely visible even under a streetlamp. Hopping through the squares brought back memories of a less troubled time, reminding Sara of how much her world had changed. She stepped off the sidewalk to kick through a mound of leaves, easing her frustrations at the expense of the neighbor who’d raked them into a pile.      She refused to buy into her mother’s paranoia. The world was not an ugly place. How could it be? She was in love. Besides, she’d be home in five minutes. What could happen in five minutes?      The driver of the van was a big man, big enough to make the full-sized van seem cramped. He sat motionless and silent leaning against the door, his pallor accentuating scars that disfigured his face, the muscles in his arms flexing visibly with the slightest movement. Still watching the girl he said, “See what I mean, Reed? She looks just like her mother.”      Reed, the man sitting in the passenger seat, didn’t answer. As he watched the young woman, who was now less than two blocks away, he tapped one foot lightly on the floor of the van and rubbed his hands together. Strands of oily hair crisscrossed the top of his head, the bare spots peppered with angry-looking red pimples. The hair on his chin no more than a wispy suggestion of a beard, insufficient to conceal his weak chin or the remnants of old blemishes around his mouth. Fleshy eyelids hooded the eyes observing the young girl.      When Reed said, “This ain’t right,” his voice was barely a whisper, as though telling himself a secret. He said it twice.      Dean swung his right arm in a big backward arc toward the passenger seat. Reed heard the squeak of seat springs and leaned away before Dean’s fist connected with his jaw. Hoping he was out of range, Reed cowered in his seat, holding his arms up to protect his head.      Dean looked away from Sara long enough to reach over and hit Reed with a quick jab. “You don’t want to make me mad. You really don’t,” he said, before turning back around to watch the girl.      The neighborhood streets formed squares around rows of neat, nondescript working-class houses, so close to each other that a man could stand between any two of them with his arms out and almost touch them both. Conscientious young parents, who lived near the local school so their kids could walk to classes, kept the neighborhood looking tidy. Each house had a small patch of grass in front; most of them had a bush or two, and some had late-blooming flowers in small flowerbeds by the front door.      Sara spotted the van down the street, and although it was out of place in her neighborhood, she only gave it a passing thought. She didn’t smell the pungent odor of the decaying wet leaves in the gutters. She didn’t feel her clothes fluttering against her skin, buffeted by the wind, or feel the coolness of the night air. She didn’t hear the dry leaves scraping along the pavement, blown past her by the wind, or hear the muted throb of the van’s engine less than two blocks away. She didn’t think about the circles of light cast on the pavement by the streetlights she walked under.      Startled by a sound both too close and too loud, she stopped and looked for the source of it. That was when she first noticed the van. Its presence made her uneasy—she didn’t like the feeling, so she didn’t take it out and examine it. She did see a squirrel racing through some dry leaves to get to a nearby tree. She took that as the source of the noise and, feeling relieved, she went back to thinking about clothes and boys and music. But a vague discomfort had settled in her mind and it stayed with her, fading in and out just beneath her consciousness, the way her shadow appeared behind her out of the blackness, slipped past her as she walked under a light, then faded back into the blackness beyond the reach of the light.      Reed looked out the passenger window, his gaze no longer following the girl. “I can’t do this.”      The driver grabbed his arm with his right hand and twisted it toward the front of the van. “You’ll do what I told you, or I’ll break your arm. You know the sound a chicken bone makes when you break it?”      Reed turned out of his seat to relieve the pressure on his arm. “All right, all right, anything you say. Just let go.”      Dean let go, but before Reed could move away, he hit the side of Reed’s face so hard Reed’s chin bounced off the metal dash board with a dull thump. Then he held his right fist in the air over Reed’s head as if he couldn’t decide what to do next. Reed leaned away from Dean, but Dean grabbed him by the hair and said, “I waited sixteen years for tonight. Do not screw it up.”      Then he pushed Reed toward the back of the van saying, “Now get out there and do what I told you.”      Reed grabbed a ski mask off the back seat as he climbed through the van and out the back door. He didn’t put the mask on because Dean had told him to wait until he got close to Sara, so no one would see him wearing it. As the van pulled away from the curb, Reed started walking toward Sara.      Sara had plans to go to a concert on Saturday, but her mother told her she was too young to go alone. She wanted to go because a boy she liked was going. In fact she liked him a lot, but her mother said the boy was trouble, that Sara wasn’t allowed to see him. He was trouble, but not the sort of trouble her mother expected.      He was trouble because Sara was so preoccupied with figuring out a way to get to the concert to see him she was unaware of what was happening around her, including the little man climbing out of the van. The feeling something was wrong still nagged at her, but we are who we are in spite of ourselves, and the girl she had become could no more go back to her friend’s house than the leaves blowing past her feet could go back where they came from.      As he pulled the van away from the curb, Dean looked in the rear view mirror to check on Reed. Driving toward Sara, he said to no one in particular, “It’s payback time, bitch.”      Dean drove about thirty feet past Sara then swung the van across the street toward the curb to start a “K” turn. After he backed up then pulled the van back into the street, he was behind Sara. He started driving slowly toward her.      Reed crossed the street toward Sara. He passed from the shadow of an old oak with a dense canopy of leaves into the light of an overhead streetlamp. She didn’t pay any attention to him as the deep throbbing sound of the van’s engine came up behind her and matched her pace.      When she turned around and looked at the van, everything seemed to stop. She stopped walking. The van stopped moving. She stopped processing smells and sounds. She looked around for help, but saw none. She silently shook her head as if to deny the scene around her. Nothing looked familiar anymore; she could have been standing on a street in a foreign country.      Then she heard footsteps behind her. She turned around just as Reed stepped out of the shadows wearing a mask, walking right toward her. She tried to recall what her mother had told her to do if something like that happened, but all she recalled were a jumble of old arguments.      She knew she was losing precious time, but fear and confusion caused her to hesitate. Indecision became paralysis. A surge of adrenaline left her feeling dizzy and nauseous, left her pulse racing and her heart pounding, left her breathing hard but short of breath. On the threshold of panic, she watched helplessly as events unfolded.      She heard the door of the van close and looked back over her shoulder toward the sound, but the rapid footfalls of the man wearing the mask meant he was coming fast. Sara turned to see the little man passing under the nearest street light, the ski mask hiding his face looked frightening. It intensified her dread, finally driving her to take action, but as she turned to run, she collided with Dean, who put his hand over her mouth, carried her to the van and put her inside.      When Reed climbed back into the van, Dean was standing over Sara. There was tape over Sara’s mouth and her wrists were bound with tape, but there wasn’t anything covering her eyes.      Dean pulled off Reed’s mask and shoved his face down close to Sara’s, saying, “She can ID you now, so you’d better do what I tell you.”      When Dean let him go, Reed backed away from him. Dean reached for Reed, and would have caught him, but he hadn’t put tape on Sara’s ankles yet and she began struggling to stand up, so he had to let Reed go. Reed jumped out the back door, the door slamming against the side of the van. Dean pushed Sara back down on the floor, and then taped her feet together and tied a hood over her head.      If Reed had still been around when Dean stepped out of the van to look for him, he would’ve heard Dean saying, “You’re a dead man. You hear me? You’re dead.”      Thirty minutes later, Dean parked near a rustic cabin hidden in a densely wooded valley. He took the tape off Sara’s ankles and dragged her out of the van, putting one arm around her waist, almost lifting her off the ground as he forced her to walk to the door of the cabin. He easily held her in place with one arm as he pounded on the door. Dean pushed the man who answered the door out of the way with his free arm as he dragged Sara inside with his other arm.      Jack, the man at the door, said, “What the Hell?” as he stumbled backwards.      Dean took Sara to one of the bedrooms. Jack, who appeared in the bedroom doorway and watched Dean tie Sara to the bed, asked Dean, “What happened to Reed?”      When Dean had Sara tied securely to the bed, he gave Jack a hard look and said, “Watch her for me,” adding, “I’ll be back,” on his way out.      With Dean gone, Jack leaned on the doorjamb, eyed the girl tied up on his bed and thought about having a little fun with her.      Dean drove back to Eastwood Avenue, past the spot where he’d kidnapped Sara. He pulled into the driveway at Sara’s house and drove to the end of it, near the back of the house where the van wouldn’t be seen.      Dean knocked on the front door. The woman who answered the door stood there, looking, blinking. Dean returned her gaze silently. She tilted her head, as if seeing the man from a different angle might help to explain what brought him to her door.      Dean watched her expression change, her wide-eyed look of surprise slowly darkening to a frown. He knew she’d made some connection to her past when he heard a sudden intake of breath. He pushed her into the house so hard she fell backwards, hitting her head on the floor. As she tried to get up, he threw Sara’s purse at her.      She sat up on the floor where she’d fallen and picked up the purse and looked at it as if it was a thing she’d never seen before. She turned it over then looked at Dean, then looked at the purse again. Her expression morphed again, her jaw dropping as she put her hands over her mouth and uttered a barely audible, unintelligible sound.      Then she screamed at Dean. “What have you done with Sara?”      Dean bent down so close to her his check was almost touching hers when he said, “You’ll do what I tell you if you want her back.”      Her shoulders slumped, tears welling up in her eyes. “Oh, please, don’t hurt my baby girl.”      Dean grabbed her hair and pulled her head back hard enough to make her wince. “You do everything I say tonight and you’ll get her back safe and sound in the morning.”      Then he put his lips next to her ear so she could feel the heat of his breath as he whispered, “I was in prison for sixteen years. That’s a long time to spend thinking about tonight. And now it’s your turn to think about what’s gonna happen to Sara if you tell anybody our little secret.”      Sara’s mother whimpered, “I’ll do anything, but please, not Sara, not my Sara.”      Dean ran his hand down the side of her face, down her neck, ripped her blouse open and pushed her down on the floor. “I’m gonna see if you’re still as good as you used to be. And while I’m enjoying this, you need to imagine the same thing happening to Sara.”                                                                                Back to The Devil's Alibi