Quarry Steps Up

When Tony Quarry finds a young Mexican runaway hiding behind his barn and decides to help him, there's no going back. The boy, Primo Estrada, separated from his mother during a tumultuous border crossing three years earlier, has been under the control of the treacherous Tercero Colina since. At first, Quarry's reluctant to get involved in Primo's plight. He's rebuilt his life in a small North Carolina town after serving a prison term for the accidental death of a college student in a barroom brawl. But when Colina tries to reclaim Primo, Quarry protects him. He is determined to not abandon Primo as his own parents gave up on him, and to stand up for the right thing regardless of cost. Furious, Colina hires Salvadoran criminals Martillo and Clavo Cuna - "the Hammer and the Nail." Quarry is forced to draw on all of his resources, including a local priest and a former prison cellmate, to protect Primo. Everything he values is at risk when the Cunas raise the stakes, culminating in a violent confrontation at Quarry's farmhouse.

Born and raised in New York City, fiction writer, RJ McCarthy, has lived in the South more than half his life. He received his Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina in 1972 and worked as a Clinical Psychologist before retiring in 2006 to devote himself to writing full-time. An athlete in high school and college, physical fitness has remained an integral part of his life - he earned a black belt in karate from Shotokan Karate of America at 34, placed second in the 90 kilo division of the Virginia State Olympic-style weightlifting meet at 39, and won the silver medal (shot put) in the North Carolina Senior Games at 60. Physical fitness is often a key feature in his protagonists’ profiles. McCarthy is a member of the Virginia Writer’s Group, the North Carolina Writer’s Network, and both the Franklin County and Vance County Arts Councils. He’s been writing fiction for 40 years and has a binder full of rejections to prove it. Quarry Steps Up, crime fiction, is his first published novel. Married and the father of two adult children, he and his wife, Susan, reside with two dogs and four cats in Henderson, North Carolina.