The Cypress Trap
By JC Gatlin
Genre: Suspense, Thriller
Genre: Suspense, Thriller
Release Date: August 16, 2015
A good vacation delivers you home
alive.
This is not a good vacation.
When Rayanne commandeers her husband’s weekend fishing trip, she knows it’ll take work to adjust Owen’s attitude. She has no choice. Since the tragedy, they lost so much. They need to reconnect.
Without her knowledge, Owen texts his best buddy, Daryl, to join the getaway. The three of them aren’t alone in the backwoods of Georgia, though.
Owen took something that didn’t belong to him. Something that changed their lives. And now the owner wants it back. By any means -- including a posse led by a killer dog.
At first, Rayanne is clueless about the item and its value. One thing becomes crystal clear: If it’s not returned, they might not make it home alive.
This is not a good vacation.
When Rayanne commandeers her husband’s weekend fishing trip, she knows it’ll take work to adjust Owen’s attitude. She has no choice. Since the tragedy, they lost so much. They need to reconnect.
Without her knowledge, Owen texts his best buddy, Daryl, to join the getaway. The three of them aren’t alone in the backwoods of Georgia, though.
Owen took something that didn’t belong to him. Something that changed their lives. And now the owner wants it back. By any means -- including a posse led by a killer dog.
At first, Rayanne is clueless about the item and its value. One thing becomes crystal clear: If it’s not returned, they might not make it home alive.
Author Bio
Coming from a large family with five
brothers, JC Gatlin grew up in Grapevine, Texas, a small town outside of
Dallas. In 1999 he moved to Tampa, Florida, where he now resides. JC’s fishing
trips help him breathe authenticity into his stories, which feature the rich
landscapes of Texas and Florida as backdrops.
He has written a monthly column in
New Tampa Style magazine and penned several mystery-suspense stories. His
first, The Designated Survivor, was published in 2013. JC invites you to visit
his mystery writing blog at jcgatlin.com.
EXCERPT:
Rayanne heard the kids’ voices, and she
looked again at the old cars in the bottom of the ditch.
The first thing that came to mind was rattlesnakes. But she knew she couldn’t
think of that right now.
She got up and headed for the rusted jeep. The hood was gone and it looked like
a corpse left to rot in the sun. She glanced at the other cars. There was a
hatchback with no doors. A pickup was off to one side, on blocks. The wheels
had been removed and the driver’s side door thrown open and left to hang. There
was a yellow Volkswagen Beetle half buried in the dirt.
Brown and yellow weeds sprouted up between the wrecks, but the ground was hard
and Rayanne knew she had no choice. She raced past the rusting jeep, watching
where she stepped.
She moved to the shell of a Volkswagen Beetle. It had two doors. She forced the
passenger side open and looked into the dank interior. The overhead lining
draped down like a misty shroud. Weeds had grown through the undercarriage and
overtaken the floorboards. But two front seats and a long backseat remained. It
could be a hiding place, she thought, and squeezed herself into the backseat.
She cowered as low as she could.
She held her breath and prayed there was nothing living inside.
She shut her eyes and listened. The teens’ voices grew louder. They sounded
like they were coming down into the hollow and she could hear Scut—or was it
Roddy—say something about the cars. He sounded excited.
Dru was farther away. Rayanne could hear her calling the dog. Perhaps she
didn’t want to walk down into the dump. It didn’t matter. Rayanne knew Scut and
Roddy already had.
Their voices echoed, slipping between the cars. One of them said something
about the pile of tires and the other laughed. She could hear them moving
about, throwing rocks on metal remains, until they stopped right in front of
the Volkswagen.
Rayanne stopped breathing.
“She’s hide’n here somewhere,” Scut was saying. He threw another rock and it
hit the bumper. The sound reverberated through the Volkswagen, and Rayanne
shivered.
“Naaaah,” Roddy said. It sounded like
he was walking away. “I don’t think so. She’s a woman. She ain’t gonna come
down here.”
“We’re not leav’n till we search every car.” Scut sounded like he was stepping
away too. She could hear him throwing rocks at other cars now.
Rude Roddy was saying something when one of them screamed. For a second Rayanne
thought Dru had made her way down into the dump. She was surprised to learn it
was Scut.
“There’s a rattler! There’s a rattler!” Scut’s high-pitched wail echoed through
the hollow, and she heard what sounded like some kind of skirmish. Perhaps an
avalanche of gravel rolled down the slopes of the hollow, like marbles beneath
their feet.
“I hate snakes! I hate ’em!” Scut’s voice rapidly moved away, and it sounded as
far as Dru’s now. The girl asked them what was wrong.
They had to have climbed out of the hollow, Rayanne thought. She opened her
eyes. She wanted to poke her head up, but didn’t dare.
What is your mystery
sub-genre?
The
mystery genre has a deep subgenre which defines the degree of adult language,
the amount of gore, the type of sleuth and even the level of
investigation, among other things. Understanding your subgenre will help you
market the story to the write audience and sell it to the right publisher.
Mystery-Suspense Subgenres
Amateur Sleuth: the
murder is solved by an ordinary person, as opposed to a professional
detective or police office.
Classic Whodunit: a murder is solved by a
private eye, generally written in first person from the detective’s point of
view.
Comic: a
murder investigation is played for laughs, often featuring a bumbling detective
who is grossly unskilled, but manages to solve the crime despite himself.
Inspector Gadget and Inspector Clouseau come to mind.
Cozy: a
mystery in
which sex and violence are downplayed or treated humorously, and the
murder takes place in a small, socially intimate community where an
outside, often eccentric detective investigates.
Dark Thriller: a
mystery that ventures slightly into the horror genre, with intensified
suspense and violence.
Forensic: a
murder solved by a crime lab team who analyse, identify, and interpret the
physical evidence. They reconstruct events to prove a crime was committed, and
to connect a suspect to that crime.
Historical: a
mystery that takes place in a distinct, recognizable era of history, with
a great deal of emphasis on describing the details of the setting.
Legal: a
mystery that takes place largely in the court room or within the justice
system, and often features a defense attorney believing his client is
innocent and trying to prove it.
Locked Room: a
murder that appears to have been committed under impossible circumstances
— such as a room with a locked door and windows and no visible sign of entry.
Police Procedural: a murder investigated from
the perspective of police detective, with a great deal of emphasis on detailed,
real-life police procedures.
Hard Boiled: A
murder investigated by a tough-guy, private investigator for hire, who
generally operates outside the long arm of the law and plays by his own rules.
These are generally told from the first person Private Eye’s Point of View.
Noir: Generally
a dark, disturbing narrative told from the point of view of the victim, a
suspect or the murderer.
Psychological Suspense: mysteries focused the Why-dunit,
not only delving into what motivated the murderer to commit the
crime, but often why the sleuth is driven to investigate, and even why the
suspects are driven to lie, cheat and mislead the poor sleuth
Romantic Suspense: a murder mystery which
devotes an equal amount of the plot to the basic romance formula (boy
meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back).
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