Act of Contrition: A Trent Carter Novel

By Richard Trice

ACT OF CONTRITION is an historical novel and modern western that pulls the reader back and forth in time, spanning from the World War II battlefields of North Africa to the badlands of present day Northeastern New Mexico and Southern Colorado. Trent Carter is a sixty-something, washed up veteran and retired cop recuperating from injuries physical, mental, and emotional. He blames himself for his wife's death, drinks and smokes too much, lives with his grown daughter and a mangy orange tomcat, and is trying to avoid the advances of an attractive local widow. He is suddenly pulled out of retirement to investigate several seemingly unrelated cases involving vandalism at a nearby ranch, the discovery of skeletal remains buried under an old theater, a series of decades old "cold case" murders that seem to be starting again - and a cryptic old journal that may tie them all together. Add to that, Trent's dead wife now regularly appears to him, to share vague, mysterious clues that don't really seem to make much sense. 70 years earlier, Otto Eberhardt is a young WWII German soldier who has just escaped from the American prison camp at Trinidad, Colorado. He is sick of death and destruction and wishes only to survive and return to his family in Europe - that is, if they're still alive. But a fellow escapee, his former Nazi commanding officer, has other ideas, including carrying on the war right here in America, no matter the cost. Trent and Otto may be separated by time and history, but the two men become unexpectedly bound together on similar, intertwining journeys that will lead them both to a level of redemption they had each given up on long ago.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1985319330
• ISBN13: 9781985319332
• Release Date: May 2018
• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Length: 497 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 1.1" x 6.0"