The Crawling Death (Two-Fisted Todd Adventures, Book 1) by Cora Buhlert

Release date: January 14, 2018

Subgenre: Men's adventure

About The Crawling Death: 

 

1966. Freelance troubleshooter Todd Donovan is hired to locate Dr. Pat Turner, a biologist who has gone missing in the South American jungle. It seems like an easy job at first, but then Todd finds himself staring into the barrel of a gun.

Captured and taken to the jungle compound of the drug lord Durango, Todd finally meets up with Dr. Turner, who turns out to be not just a beautiful woman, but also Durango's prisoner.

Durango is not the sort of man to leave potential witnesses alive. And so Todd and Dr. Pat Turner are soon facing a painful end in Durango's pit of crawling death…

This is a short adventure story of approx. 5500 words or 20 pages in the style of the men's adventure pulps of the 1960s. 

Excerpt:

 

“This was supposed to be an easy job.”
Todd Donovan, freelance troubleshooter had been repeating this sentence to himself over and over again these past seven hours. “Think of the money. This was supposed to be an easy job.”
Because it was. Lone Oak University had hired him to locate a biologist, one Dr. Pat Turner, who’d taken a sabbatical during the spring term of 1966 and promptly gone missing in the Latin American nation of San Jacinto, while researching rare specimens of something or other in Latin. The University had even helpfully provided Todd with a map of the exact area where Dr. Turner was supposed to be researching the rare specimens of whatever.
So Todd had flown down to San Jacinto on an ancient DC-4 and rented an equally ancient Jeep to take him to the area where Dr. Turner had been last seen, researching the rare whatevers. Easy, right?
Except that the area where Dr. Turner had been last seen turned out to a largely uncharted jungle with nothing in the way of roads. Todd drove the rickety Jeep as far as he could, then he continued on foot. For seven fucking hours, he hacked his way through a mosquito ridden jungle at approximately ninety-eight degrees Fahrenheit.
Okay, so it wasn’t an easy job. But the money was still pretty damn good.
He’d finally found Dr. Turner’s camp or rather what was left of it exactly where it was supposed to be. Because the camp had clearly been razed, equipment overturned, the radio smashed. And it didn’t look like a random animal attack either. No, this was the work of human hands.
Though Todd barely had the chance to investigate before he found himself staring into the barrel of a gun.
An easy job. Yeah, right.
Slowly, he raised his hands.

The gunman, an ugly guy with a missing front tooth, took Todd’s gun, his machete and his knife, though he missed the back-up blade Todd kept in his boot.
Not that it helped much, for the gunman also bound his hands behind his back. Though at least it was rope and not cuffs. Ropes were easier to break than cuffs.
And then Todd was marched off, deeper into the jungle, most likely to meet the gunman’s boss, for his captor had “hired goon” written all over him.
By now it was pretty obvious to Todd what had happened. While researching the rare specimens of whatever, Dr. Turner had stumbled upon whatever nefarious activities the goon and his bosses were up to and had been promptly captured. And now the same thing had happened to Todd.
Fucking stupid that. He’d allowed to let himself be taken like a rank amateur. Stupid.
On the other hand, it also meant that he didn’t have to search for Dr. Turner anymore, since the goon was taking him right there. Provided Dr. Turner was still alive, that was…

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About Cora Buhlert:

Cora Buhlert was born and bred in North Germany, where she still lives today – after time spent in London, Singapore, Rotterdam and Mississippi. Cora holds an MA degree in English from the University of Bremen and is currently working towards her PhD. 

Cora has been writing, since she was a teenager, and has published stories, articles and poetry in various international magazines. She is the author of the Silencer series of pulp style thrillers, the Shattered Empire space opera series, the In Love and War science fiction romance series, the Helen Shepherd Mysteries and plenty of standalone stories in multiple genres. When Cora is not writing, she works as a translator and teacher.

 

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