Böcker av Daniel McLinden

Mary, a twelve-year-old middle school softball pitcher is murdered in a school shooting along with all her classmates and teacher in Alexandria, Virginia. Mary's father, grandfather and a family friend, steeped in grief and anger, fixate on the real culprit, NRA poster boy Senator Mitch McConnell. Mary's grandfather (Tony), a Vietnam vet and ex-CIA operative, tells an old FBI buddy he's thinking about writing a political novel and asks the buddy how he would go about killing a senator. The buddy sees through Tony's literary smokescreen and tips off the FBI that taps Tony's phone and puts a listening device and tracer on his car.The FBI captures Tony and his son-in-law (Richard Wallace/Mary's dad), following Mitch McConnell's car to a five-star restaurant. In Tony's car there are face-hiding covid masks, weapon-hiding long coats, and a new AR-15 rifle. The federal court trial for conspiracy for attempted murder underscores the government's dead-to-rights evidence against the co-conspirators, on the one hand, and temporary insanity, driven by the tragic loss of an innocent child, on the other. The plot twists and turns along the way. The characters are real and memorable. Despite the gravity of what happened, there is still room for humor and romance under a constant umbrella of gun politics and legal maneuvers. Then in the end, the totally unexpected happens.

America - land of opportunity - nation of immigrants. There is a special magic to America. It comes from the diversity of its people. Like the characters in Tracks they come from all over - places like Guadalajara, Chapala, Chihuahua and Zacatecas, Mexico, Kirkaldy, Scotland, Barnmeen, Ireland, Copenhagen, Denmark, disputed territory in the shadow of Mt. Ararat in the Caucasus Mountain Range, Bremerhaven, Germany, and Padua, Italy. In 1919, when young Pedro Figueroa and Antonio Flores were refused seats to a travelling Shakespearian and Broadway show on a Saturday night in a saloon in Socorro, New Mexico, the lead actor stopped the show and took them aside. He offered these words of encouragement: "You boys got to do the same things my folks did. Work hard. Raise a family. Make sure your kids get to school. Your day will come. This is a great country. Look, we got rid of slavery. Things get better all the time. Lives are lived in stages. Look at the caterpillar, crawling about, making little tracks on the ground, and then it''s into a cocoon, and before long, it''s flying about, a butterfly." Tracks is a testament to the spirit of immigrants who come to America and make it a better place.