swift creeks press

DEADLY DRIFTS – SYNOPSIS

Macduff Brooks works hard at being a successful fly fishing guide in Wyoming and Montana, plays the oboe marginally, drinks too much Gentleman Jack, and struggles with relationships with women. He’s been Macduff Brooks for less than a decade and often wants to return to his earlier existence as the happily married law professor Maxwell Hunt in Florida. It was not to be―his pregnant wife El died two decades ago in a horrible accident on the Snake River in Wyoming. Depressed, he was increasingly willing to accept “special work” for a federal agency, which resulted in near death from a beating in Guatemala. Saved and returned to Washington, his death from a stroke was announced in the press, and he was placed in a federal protection program with a new identity and location. As Macduff Brooks, he moves between his new homes in Montana and Florida, but cannot escape his Guatemalan assailants who increasingly doubt that he died.

Beginning his guiding in Montana and Wyoming, Macduff has a client fishing with him on the Snake River who is shot and killed by a sniper on shore. Perhaps the shot was meant for Macduff; it may have been by one of Macduff’s Guatemalan and Sudanese assailants, who have promised to find and kill him. His tumultuous life is interfering with his evolving relationship with Lucinda Lang, a New York investment banker who owns a large Montana ranch near Macduff. His Sudanese assailant proves to be a terrorist determined to topple the Empire State and Chrysler buildings, the latter where Lucinda has her office. Macduff is sent to assassinate the Sudanese terrorist but fails.

The final act is on Macduff’s wooden drift boat “Osprey”, rowing an angler in disguise, who proves to be a former client of Macduff who believed Macduff embarrassed him in front of his trophy wife when Macduff guided the two on a float on the same Snake River. The final shootout ends in the death of the killer, but with Macduff and Lucinda, and Macduff’s loyal rescued Sheltie Wuff, all seriously injured.