City By The Bay

Preview the first chapter of my new book CITY BY THE BAY CHAPTER 1 The Judge hung on with a death grip to the chrome legs at the front of the seat he’d been thrown out of. His body was violently torqued to the left and then to the right as the cable car accelerated out of control down the hill. The acid smell of flames choked his throat and stung his eyes. He wondered if he’d see Katy, his bride, again, or their little boy…Ralphie! The screams of the other passengers at the upper-end of the car had gone quiet, the upper-end fully engulfed in the fire. The flesh on his ankles and legs was starting to char, like broiled meat. It had started out an ordinary morning, like the four mornings before. Fog had rolled up the hill toward Chestnut Street in thick cotton mists from the Bay, filtering the early morning light into a spidery web of shadows and rays. The Judge had snuggled deeper into his overcoat as he’d walked, wishing he could have spent another hour in bed pressed up to the side of Katy, his years-younger bride, warm, soft, feminine smelling. But the merger he’d been working on was a big one and negotiations had taken a startling turn. Like clockwork, it was 7:30 a.m. when the Judge climbed from wet slippery pavement on to the Hyde cable car at the top of Chestnut. As he did so, a pretty, young woman in a red slicker smiled at him from across the street. He smiled back, then took his favorite seat at the front in the lower end of the car, where he could look out the downhill windows, down the steep street to the foggy city below. San Francisco was quiet, deserted, all whites and greys, like some ancient borough not quite ready to be shaken alive. This would be his fourth meeting at the law offices of Weinstock & Chan. And the plaintiff’s CEO and Chief Scientist, Dr Richard Lee, was supposed to be there for the purpose of finalizing acquisition terms. But his client, C. Jeffery Coldstone, had called at 6:10 Wednesday, the night before from Virginia, with shocking news. This Dr. Lee had stolen Coldstone’s technology. Just tucked their only prototype into his briefcase when no one was watching and walked out of their lab. A brazen theft of proprietary technology if ever there was. The Judge was going to nail Dr. Lee’s ass to the barnyard door for that stunt. It was not the way things were done. He’d looked around the car. It was almost empty. Two young men in spiffy suits and college ties who looked to be novice brokers or venture capitalists, shared their ride to the office as they had each of the prior mornings, comparing notes in not so discreet tones as to their successes…or not, in female-bedding the night before. An old Chinese gentleman sprawled across two seats behind the Judge, arms spread [...]

2023-05-19T01:56:17+00:00May 19th, 2023|

Podcast Interview April 20

Learn about Davis MacDonald and his murder mysteries during this podcast interview. He shares a lot of inside stories about his writing. The podcast will also feature his newest murder mystery novel "The Cruise". Find your comfortable chair, grab a cup of your favorite drink and listen to the 15 minute interview. Tune in on April 20, 2021.  Best of all, the interview will play all day, so no worries about missing it, just mark your calendar for April 20! Enjoy! Click HERE for a review and some background.

2021-04-19T15:34:10+00:00April 17th, 2021|

The Lake: Now available on Amazon

Preview the first chapter of my new book THE LAKE. CHAPTER 1 The Judge couldn’t sleep.  He quietly shifted the covers off, and stuck one bare foot and then the other off the antique four-     poster bed and onto the cold wood floor.  From there he raised his considerable bulk to sitting, slid off the bed, tiptoed across the floor, tottering out into the hall and down the stairs to the cabin’s main floor.  At the foot of the stairs he passed the tall grandfather clock that had belonged to his great great grandmother. It read 1:33 a.m. He let his breath out in the living room, apparently successful in not waking his young bride, twenty years his junior. The cabin was old.  Even older than the Judge. Built in 1908, it stood testimony to the pioneer spirit that settled Lake Arrowhead in the early 1900s.  It was originally a two-story cottage, built at the bottom of its lot, hanging over the Lake and a private dock. It was a place of plywood interiors aged in golden brown and a huge fireplace in the great room crafted from local stone. The Judge’s family had modernized it here and there over the generations:     forced air heating, new kitchen, basement built out into a game room and a bedroom, attic now a combination bedroom and office.  The footprint hadn’t changed, but the space had grown vertically to some 2,500 square feet. The Judge had inherited the cabin when his mother died. Whispering Point was its name.  And although his busy schedule precluded him from visiting Lake Arrowhead often, it was still a sanctuary of sorts for him.  Clean air, the crystal-clear lake reflecting sparkling blue skies, and nights filled with a thousand stars. The cabin was set on a semi-peninsula jutting out into the Lake.  In the evenings the lapping water of the lakeshore whispered up through the pines to the cabin’s interior, hence its name. In the great room were       the old     almost floor-to-ceiling window, opened to let in the night air.  The Judge stood before them, looking out. There was a large yellow moon shooting a broken yellow ribbon across the Lake surface, rippled by a gusty wind.  Winter would be here soon. He could hear, almost taste, the soft lapping of the Lake’s edges against the shore, sending a calliope of sound floating up around the cabin.  It was very peaceful. Like an empty church. A boat started up across the Lake, over toward Lake Arrowhead Village.  A speedboat with big engines and noisy pipes, droning like a distant bee in the background, making the surrounding silence even more precious.  Someone was up late. Perhaps heading home on the water after a pub-crawl in the Village. The Judge took deep breaths, sucking in scents of the Lake, the trees, and the intermittent brush, feeling his soul replenished in some measure by the air and the quiet romance of the place and the night. But there [...]

2019-12-21T17:25:39+00:00December 18th, 2019|

The Strand: Now available on Amazon

Preview the first chapter of my new book THE STRAND. CHAPTER 1 The Judge pulled into a parking space facing the Ocean Hill Pier to enjoy his Starbucks. And to watch the huge waves pounding the beach and the pier. A storm in Mexico had ignited the surf up and down the West-facing beaches, making for a stunning display of foaming white surf and churning green water, some of the waves reaching ten feet. The pier was taking a beating. He wished he’d time to walk out a bit onto the shuddering structure. He imagined his hair flying in the salty spray, the smell of the waves filling his nostrils, feet planted against the raging wind, wrapped in the old raincoat he kept in the trunk to repel spray. Like a swashbuckling Scottish sea captain of old, feet planted on a bit of flotsam that was his ship. But it was only a fantasy. There wasn’t time. He took a long slug of his Starbucks, feeling the caffeine hit his blood stream like a kick in the pants. Waking him up. He wiped latte foam from his upper lip. He was on route from home in Malaga Cove to his office in Venice. But he’d stopped in the City of Ocean Hill, a small but affluent community tucked above Hermosa Beach to the South, and LAX to the North, and fronting some of the best beach in California. He had to go into the office today for one more case to tidy up. But it seemed like it was always one more. For thirty years now, always just one more case. Time went by, you grew older, a little less hair to comb, a little harder to read the newspaper, a little shorter on exercise, a little more weight to haul around, a little tougher to see the scale under your tummy. Days, weeks, months all flew by quicker now, the ‘TO DO’ list got longer, and you weren’t as quick checking things off. Perhaps because you didn’t have all the answers now, answers that came so easily and with such conviction in your youth. But then you were right more often now, fewer answers but better ones he supposed, although he wasn’t so sure. And he was now responsible for his family. Katy, twenty years his junior. And their joint creation, Ralphie, only five, a young little man starting to wonder why his dad wasn’t any good at baseball or basketball. Why his dad was so… old. This domestic gig was still relatively new for him. Just five years. He’d mostly been a solitary creature, by happenstance, by nature, living on this plain of crowded humanity: social animals with herd instincts, ready to praise or damn whomever the combined collective deemed worthy or unworthy, whomever ignited and swayed the passions of the day, ready to believe the best or the worst about anybody or anything that captured their popular imagination. He’d been a Judge. Now he was a [...]

2019-04-16T16:39:22+00:00October 4th, 2018|
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