Misfit Blues

Misfit Blues is a novella of love and crime, Goodbye, Columbus meets The Friends of Eddie Coyle...It’s both an ill-fated love story (she’s already engaged, he’s not quite in her class) and a suspenseful mystery set on Martha’s Vineyard in the summer of 1989. Housepainter Tommy Shakespear, a Golden Gloves boxer and Dartmouth B-school dropout, has to locate and persuade a terrified witness to return to Boston from the Vineyard, where she’s been in hiding. She’s the only one who can testify to the innocence of her not-so-innocent boyfriend, charged with attempted murder and grievous bodily assault. Meanwhile, a slumlord’s hired thugs (who are ex-cops and guilty of the crime) are also trying to track her down to eliminate the problem.

Michael G. West, a graduate of Williams College and the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, is the author of several novels, including the Tommy Shakespear Mystery Thriller series. He has worked as a dishwasher, short-order cook, housepainter, shingler, sheetrock taper, private tutor, taxi driver, college professor, freelance book editor, computer programmer, industry analyst and strategy consultant in several countries and on both coasts, north and south, in the U.S. He currently lives year round on Martha’s Vineyard, an island off Cape Cod, Massachusetts.