The Wind in My Heart by Douglas Wynne

 

Release date: January 15, 2021

Subgenre:  Occult thriller, Paranormal thriller

 

About The Wind in My Heart:

 

Miles Landry is trying to put violence behind him when he takes up work as a private detective focused on humdrum adultery cases. But when a Tibetan monk hires him to find a missing person, things get weird fast. Charged with tracking down the reincarnation of a man possessed by a demonic guardian from the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Miles is plunged into a world of fortune-tellers, gangsters, and tantric rituals. The year is 1991 and a series of grisly murders has rocked New York City in the run up to a visit from the Dalai Lama. The police attribute the killings to Chinatown gang warfare. Miles–skeptical of the supernatural–is inclined to agree. But what if the monster he's hunting is more than a myth? 

“Douglas Wynne’s THE WIND IN MY HEART is compelling, full of heart, and creative in ways that hit all the notes I want in a thriller while remaining fresh and full of ingenuity. Wynne is a worthy successor to William Hjortsberg and has me counting beads on my mala, mindful that I am more than a little jealous of what he has done here. THE WIND IN MY HEART firmly falls in the category of Things I Wish I Had Written!”--Bracken MacLeod, author of Stranded and Closing Costs

“Douglas Wynne delivers all the thrills and chills and twists and turns of your favorite police procedurals in this neo-noir thriller! And so much more! Set in 1991 The Wind in My Heart is full of murder, Tibetan philosophy, history and magic along with gritty depictions of New York City on the eve of a historic visit from the Dalai Lama. Thoughtful. Clever. Philosophical and action packed. Like Falling Angel meets Tim Powers meets Seven Years in Tibet.”–Daniel Braum, author of Underworld Dreams

 

Excerpt:

 

They call Doyers Street Murder Alley. It’s the perfect place for any killing you would want to commit under the cover of gang violence. One block long with a sharp ninety-degree angle in the middle, it runs from Pell Street to the Bowery at Chatham Square and is—according to the cops—the bloodiest intersection in America. There are probably two reasons for this. One is the sharp bend in the street whence comes the nickname, “The Bloody Angle,” a feature that lends itself well to gang ambushes. The other is a pedestrian tunnel that runs under the buildings, offering quick escape routes to East Broadway and Catherine.

A tight channel, like a slaughterhouse chute, seldom traveled by cars, it’s a street that seems to serve no purpose as there are plenty of other ways to get where you’re going without it. Which is not to say it’s devoid of cultural heritage. Home to the oldest Chinese tea house in America, the Nom Wah, and the site of the 1905 Chinese Theater Massacre in which Hip Sing gunmen opened fire on a group of On Leong gangsters under cover of a string of firecrackers, today the street bustles with knick-knack shops, barbers, and restaurants between graffiti stricken corrugated metal panels at street level and rat-infested tinderbox tenements above.

The once secret tunnel has been converted into an underground shopping arcade where, on December 27 at 2:17 A.M., Sammy Fong found the remains of David Yu in a pool of blood long after the retailers, acupuncturists, and fortune tellers brave enough to hang a shingle down there had locked up for the night.

But I don’t find Sammy in Murder Alley today. I find him right where Joe Navarro told me I would: smoking a (probably untaxed) cigarette in another alley, a garbage-reeking space piled with empty wooden vegetable crates behind the kitchen of Mappow’s restaurant. He’s lanky but not without some muscle, dressed in black jeans and a white sleeveless t-shirt, arms and pockmarked face glazed with sweat from the kitchen steam, a white bandanna tied under his shaggy hair. He reminds me of an extra in a karate movie, but I’ve had enough karate for one week.

 Spur of the moment I decide to forgo the reporter angle and play it straight with him. “Sammy,” I say, as I come around the corner from where I’ve been watching him. I’m not even sure this is the kid I’m looking for—they’ve kept his photo out of the papers—but he looks up at the sound of his name and the fear on his face confirms it.

He tosses the butt at the ground and backs up toward the screen door to the kitchen. I can see woks and colanders hanging on the wall, hear voices calling over the sizzle of stir-fry, but there’s no one in sight of the back door. “What do you want?” he asks and sniffles. I don’t know what he looks like on a good day, but he doesn’t look well to me today. It’s the look of a man who has not been getting much sleep. And no jacket or even sleeves in February? I’m sure it’s hot in that kitchen over the dishwashing sink, but it’s in the thirties out here.

I flip open my wallet and show him my PI license. “Miles Landry. I’d like to talk to you about the night that made you famous.”

 

Amazon

 

About Douglas Wynne:

Douglas Wynne is the author of five previous novels, including The Devil of Echo Lake, Steel Breeze, and the SPECTRA Files trilogy. His short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies and his writing workshops have been featured at genre conventions and schools throughout New England. He lives in Massachusetts with his wife and son and a houseful of animals.

 

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