Hiding Hutchinson, Return the Favor,
A Fine Wind and The Mills of God
Adah Armstrong a.k.a. Gerry Bell
At Dartmouth, Gerry tried to avoid any course that required a paper. He was heeding the advice of one of his professors, who said early on, “Your grammar and punctuation are fine, but you lack style and you really don’t have anything to say.”
However, during a long consulting career, Gerry had to write hundreds of reports to corporate managements. Practice makes perfect – or, if not perfect, better. After his retirement, Gerry started writing short memoir pieces – his “Angels, Chariots, and Isaiah 40:31” was published in the anthology “The Runner’s High” and his dog Dakota is the subject of the dog biography “This Little Black Wolf.” The written transcript of his 50th Reunion Special Interest Presentation “The Big Picture: the Origin, History, and Ultimate Fate of the Universe” also appears on this website.
More recently, Gerry has contributed regular commentaries to the editorial page of his local paper, the Bennington Banner. Now he’s tackled one of his bucket list items by writing a full-length novel, entitled “Hiding Hutchinson.” Here’s the précis from Amazon Kindle and Kindle Unlimited (also available in paperback):
Abigail Hutchinson is a former professional athlete hiding from her deranged former agent, who means to do her physical harm – or worse. Hank Reynolds is a visionary consultant who has seen the future and can’t get anyone to listen. A ten-year-old girl with a penchant for puzzles brings them together.
Can Hutchinson escape from her self-imposed prison and live a normal life? Can Hank find someone to help him make an end run around the executive suites and help corporate employees directly? Most important, can the two of them become – and stay -- a couple in the face of her terrifying situation and the demands of his crusade?
Set in Toronto’s beautiful cottage country of Georgian Bay, Ontario, “Hiding Hutchinson” covers the waterfront from cutthroat business intrigue to love and heartbreak to Seal Team commando tactics. The cast of supporting characters is colorful, and the fishing isn’t bad either.
Author’s Note to the ’68 Website: Yes, it’s a chick book. I became addicted to them during the pandemic. And yes, most of them – this one is no exception -- are predictable and formulaic, but that’s why I chose the genre. I figured, “Hey, how hard can it be?” More demanding than I thought, actually. But I did learn some things. Among them, as I read the reviews of other books: little credibility will attach to the male author of a romance novel for which the primary readership will likely be women. Hence the female nom de plume. Hope you enjoy this anyway, regardless of gender.
Gerry's (or should I say Adah's) days as an author continue. This time with a mystery, Return the Favor. Here’s the précis from Amazon Kindle and Kindle Unlimited (also available in paperback):
Someone is killing the most toxic troublemakers on Granite ClIffs Island – and the murders have been carried out by uncommon and theatrical means. Kate Harwood, the only female homicide detective in the Portland police department, is assigned to the cases along with her partner Sam Chapman. The murders may look like poetic justice delivered to some truly contemptible people, but Kate and Sam are sworn to uphold the law …
Somehow, the killings look a little too staged, the alibis of obvious suspects a little too solid, and Kate begins to suspect something more devious at work. Combining her own instincts with the talents of a brilliant young woman from Adah Armstrong’s first novel “Hiding Hutchinson,” Kate tries to unravel the intricate puzzle – all while fighting her department superior’s deep-rooted gender prejudice and incompetence.
She faces an ethical challenge too, as her attention is forced by that same superior to focus on one of his worst enemies – and one of her idols. How to resolve this, if it can be resolved at all?
With a cast of new characters and some old friends from the author’s prior novel, “Return the Favor” is a model of police procedure and a challenging brain-teaser with a startling conclusion. Not to be missed!
Gerry's third book is now available. The genre? Well, it's complicated: a little Sci-Fi, a little love story with some counter-factual history thrown in. A Fine Wind is all those things. Get the book from Amazon Kindle and Kindle Unlimited (also available in paperback):
If you could walk back through history and change one event, what would it be? Warn the Pacific Fleet on December 6 that the Japanese were coming? Put the bubble top on JFK’s limousine? Have armed air marshals on the September 11 flights?
And what would you do if things still went wrong? These questions and more face Logan Hutchinson, a featured character in Adah Armstrong’s first two novels, and her fiancé Billy Donovan, senior astronaut in Earth’s Space Force. Logan is a grown woman now, a brilliant astrophysicist, and her revolutionary new theory of dark energy has made it possible to travel to the past. What can – what should – she and Billy do with this new power?
The answer is part science fiction, part romance, and part counterfactual history. The sky’s the limit for possibilities. But even the most miniscule change can have enormous consequences, so be careful what you wish for …
Gerry's fourth book is now available. The Mills of God is a political thriller featuring many of the characters introduced in previous books. Get the book from Amazon Kindle and Kindle Unlimited (also available in paperback):
With her investigative consulting firm long since established, Portland Maine detective Kate Harwood is asked to listen to the deathbed confession of a man haunted by a decades-old secret. What she hears leaves her shaken. Two of the most important men in the world, now immensely powerful and seemingly beyond the reach of the law, committed a savage crime in their early teens. The dying man begs Kate to bring them to justice.
His story starts Kate on a journey that will lead to the highest corridors of power, inhabited by flawed individuals everywhere she turns. Some are decent but cynical; some have good instincts but lack courage; others range across a dark spectrum from amoral to evil. Kate must now face everything she never knew about politicians and didn’t want to ask.
In this sequel to Adah Armstrong’s ‘Return the Favor,’ Kate is aided by her partner Sam Chapman and her one-time apprentice Logan Hutchinson, who worked with her on her career-making case ten years earlier. A college student then, Logan is a world-renowned astrophysicist now. Pregnant with her first child, awaiting her astronaut husband’s return from man’s first journey to the planet Saturn, Logan adds her vision and imagination to Kate’s dogged investigative techniques. Together, they will test the validity of an old proverb: “Though the mills of God grind slowly, they grind exceeding small … ”
Filled with unvarnished assessments of those we select to serve us, Adah Armstong’s newest work teaches us an object lesson: rather than choose the worst among us to lead, we might for a change try the best. Not to be missed!