E. C. Ayres Books

 

Eye of the Gator : A Tony Lowell Mystery by E. C. Ayres

A smart, hip mystery-thriller set in the outback Florida phosphate district, in which Tony Lowell tangles with developers, killers, and a poison-filled sinkhole.

E.C. Ayres' first mystery, Hour of the Manatee won the PWA/St. Martin's Press Best First P.I. Novel competition in 1992. Published to great acclaim, it introduced laid-back photographer/P.I. Tony Lowell and his friend and occasional adversary, by-the-book police detective Lena Bedrosian. In this, Ayres' second effort, serious short-staffing prompts Bedrosian to enlist Lowell's help on a murder case. The victim was the bright and promising young nephew of Tony's old friend Ernie Larson, an African-American boatyard owner from his hometown. The nephew, Tim Cross, made the mistake of taking up environmental causes in the old-boy hinterlands of central Florida's phosphate mining district, known as 'Bone Valley' with good cause.

As Lowell begins his investigation he finds himself pitted against powerful industry and development interests, as well as black advocacy groups concerned about jobs, backwoods racists who resent meddlers, and an enigmatic retired baseball Hall-of-Famer nicknamed 'Gator.'

The stakes are raised even further, however, when Lowell discovers a second victim at the site of a vast, chemical-filled sinkhole that poses a direct threat to Florida's rapidly vanishing safe-water supply. Determined to catch the killer, Lowell must first survive the hazards of backwoods Florida.

 

Hour of the Manatee by E. C. Ayres

After the murder of an elderly housekeeper who had been ready to reveal a deadly secret, a hippie dropout and a by-the-book cop are thrown into a whirlwind of FBI pursuit, silenced witnesses, family shame, and Supreme Court scandal.


Night of the Panther by E. C. Ayres

When her friend and professional rival Tony Lowell steps in to help Police Detective Lena Bedrosian solve the murder of a Fresh Water Fish and Game officer in Florida, the two soon discover that Lena has become the next person on the hit list.

 

Lair of the Lizard by E. C. Ayres

E.C. Ayers's Hour of the Manatee won the St. Martin's Press/Private Eye Writers of America award, and his subsequent P.I. novels, all with an environmental undertone, have garnered nothing but high marks from readers. In the fourth outing for Ayers's Florida P.I., Tony Lowell, the detective travels west to answer an urgent plea from his daughter Ariel.
A good friend of Ariel's, a Hispanic woman from Santa Fe, has disappeared and all indications point to foul play. Tony reluctantly agrees to go to Santa Fe to track down the missing woman. Assisted by his old acquaintance P.I. Joshua Croft, and, at Ariel's insistence, a New Age mystic, Lowell soon finds himself in over his head in a situation involving deeply divided cultures, traditions, and a general western mistrust of outsiders.
Stubbornly pressing forward, Lowell discovers that the missing woman, Alicia Sandoval, was once married to a violent felon who has continued to stalk her. He then discovers something even more chilling: The felon, a locally popular man, was previously married to a woman who also disappeared, and whose remains have just been found in a high mountain cave.
One of the last Sixties holdouts, Tony Lowell is a man with a conscience and a knack for getting embroiled in the most harrowing of situations. Ayres does not disappoint in his latest mystery, and delves deep into the exploration of the rigid Mexican-American traditional mores of the Southwest.

 



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