An excerpt from The Stolen Bride by Tony Hays, a Malgwyn ap Cuneglas medieval Arthurian mystery (available April 10, 2012).
Malgwyn ap Cuneglas is counselor to Arthur, High King of the Britons. When he accompanies his liege to the West to broker a deal between warring tribes they come across a scene of utmost depravity and murder to sicken even the most battle-hardened warrior. Things don’t get any better when they finally arrive at their destination to discover that King Doged is fighting to keep his kingdom safe from both Saxons from abroad and younger nobles vying for power. Doged loses that fight when shortly after Arthur and his counselor arrive, he is murdered. His young wife, defenseless and alone, appeals to Arthur to find her husband’s killer. Arthur quickly agrees and Malgwyn is given this almost impossible task.
Why would Arthur be so interested in helping keep this small region stable and under the High King influence? Perhaps because Doged’s people had discovered caves that might contain huge veins of gold. . . .
Chapter 1
My belly roiled and threatened to revolt. Bodies lay prostrate on the ground, in the lanes. Flies buzzed about them, feeding on the blood that reddened their wounds. The sickly sweet scent of death lay heavy in the air. For a moment, just the briefest of moments, I was not here, in this city of death, but staring instead at my own village, at my own cottage, at my beloved Gwyneth, freshly killed, freshly ravaged. I almost rushed into one of the silent huts to find my daughter, Mariam, but I knew that these raiders had been more thorough than the Saxons.
It started with a pig. Or, at least, that’s what some people say. Others claim it was just a continuation of the violence of the Civil War; indeed, one theory says that the first actual murder in the feud occurred in the last days of that conflict, and the pig, thirteen years later, was only an excuse. And what is this “it” that we’re discussing? Only the most famous blood feud in American history: The Hatfields & McCoys, complete with its own Romeo & Juliet mountain moment.
Within the last thirty years, readers have been exposed to several new versions of William Shakespeare, the Bard of Avon, versions that take us far afield from the Shakespeare that tradition has presented us. And primarily, those variations have been seen in historical mysteries and romantic suspense. We are given a view of Shakespeare as Sherlock Holmes, and his Watsonian counterpart(s), that are as varied as the plots our hero tries to sort out.
My adventure began in late July of 1997. I had been in my position as academic director for an American NGO since November 1, 1996. On this particular Wednesday morning, we had just ended a term of adult English and my children’s classes were ongoing. I was fresh from a ten day vacation in Luxor, Egypt where I had reacquainted myself with the Valley of the Kings, the Temple of Karnak, and the bustling bazaar. I had been chosen the spring before to be the founding chairman of the Overseas Security Advisory Council – Kuwait, a nonprofit group sponsored by the US State Department and comprised of members of the different segments of the American expatriate community. Our role was to assist and advise the embassy in terms of security concerns, civilian evacuations, etc. We also received training in things like identifying letter bombs or strange packages.
I do not believe every conspiracy theory that comes down the pipe. I really don’t. I am not a 9/11 “truther.” I am not a “birther.” But, as Sixth Floor Museum head Gary Mack famously told Jesse Ventura, “when I go home at night, I think there has to be something more than Lee Harvey Oswald.” When it comes down to it, I believe that William Shakespeare, the man from Stratford, wrote the works of … William Shakespeare.
Everybody loves a good vanishing act. Literally hundreds of mysterious disappearances lurk in American history. What happened to Amelia Earhart, the famous female aviator of the 1930s? Or to Judge Joseph Force Crater, who disappeared in the summer of 1930? Or to Jimmy Hoffa, the Teamsters chief who went to meet a union official and was never seen again? One thing wee can safely assume is that these were involuntary disappearances. Earhart’s plane went down somewhere in the Pacific on a round-the-globe flight. Crater had some unsavory companions and was last seen carrying a great deal of money. (Though Crater’s young mistress, Sally Lou Ritz, did disappear within weeks of Crater and, like him, has never been seen since.) And Hoffa, well, Hoffa had a lot of enemies.
We’re lucky, in a way. Laws are codified, statutory. We know the penalty for breaking a law, sort of, barring a plea bargain of some nature and depending upon the state of prison overcrowding. We have police forces charged with keeping our streets safe.
Did Jackie Kennedy believe that President Lyndon B. Johnson, her husband’s vice president, was responsible for her husband’s assassination? According to new reports from London’s 
Was John F. Kennedy a hero or an incompetent in the PT 109 story? Did patriarch Joseph P. Kennedy use the Chicago mob to steal the Illinois presidential vote in 1960? What was the truth about Jack Kennedy’s womanizing? Did the Bay of Pigs disaster play a role in President Kennedy’s assassination? How involved were the Kennedy brothers with Marilyn Monroe? Did Lee Harvey Oswald act alone? 
(Click here to read 
It wasn’t a dark and stormy night. We didn’t get many of those in Kuwait. Maybe two or three a year. Most of the time it was clear and hot. And while it wasn’t the hottest night in my 3+ year tenure in Kuwait, it was absolutely the longest of my life. Which was reasonable considering that it was the first and only time in my life that I was held at a Kuwaiti police station on suspicion of attempted murder.
(Read more about 
When I first went to Japan several years ago, I knew very little about Japanese crime. Oh, I had seen Michael Douglas’ film “Black Rain” in 1989. And I knew something about the Japanese mob, the Yakuza, the bold, vicious network of crime families that, Hollywood tells us, terrorizes the country. But reputation and reality are two very different things. The Japanese absolutely love mysteries. From Edogawa Rampo, the “Father of Japanese Mystery,” to Timothy Hemion’s Inspector Morimoto series, mysteries have enthralled Japanese audiences. Japan is popular with historical mystery authors, but the pickings are somewhat slim for novels set in contemporary Japan. And that makes it fertile ground for novelists. Here are some things that any potential author or consumer of Japanese mysteries ought to know.
I admit it. I read conspiracy books. As I look at my bookcases, I see shelves of them, the good, the bad, and quite frankly, the whimsical. Let me say first of all, I do not know who killed John Kennedy or his brother Bobby. I do not know who cut short Martin Luther King’s life. I do not know because none of the thousands of conspiracy-driven books nor any of the lone shooter-focused books have convinced me beyond doubt. Not yet. Let me tell you why.
