   
It has been rumored that LOW END has
made certain government agencies so
uncomfortable that it has been placed on a list
of publications that the mass media reviewers are
advised to avoid and to which no publicity should
be given.
Gary Morrissey has a way of finding
trouble. Actually there's no real talent for it
on his part, it seems that the troubles make
their way to him. He thinks that life has handed
him a very poor five cards, but they're really no
worse than anyone else's. His perspective is
narrowed though. You see, people have this
uncannily bad habit of passing away. Suddenly.
Unexpectedly. And right in Gary's back yard.
The
police are always suspicious of Gary -- how can
there be so much smoke and no fire? Of course,
the real murderers don't care for Gary either
because Gary has this uncomfortable desire to
have the cops get the right man, as long as it
isn't him!
Gary's
friends. Hmmm, musicians, bikers... He likes the
young ladies too. As a semi-starving musician
making his way through a series of day jobs taken
only to feed the belly and the landlord, he rubs
elbows with some real characters. Living in
Yonkers in the 1980's, Gary is close enough to
New York City to keep his finger on the pulse of
the music business and close enough to the Bronx
and New Rochelle to keep his world decidedly
tawdry.
Read
about Gary and his world in LOW END published by
American Book Publishing and in the
soon-to-be-released sequel -- DEEP END: The Wreck
of the Eddie Fitz.
About LOW END:
A murder mystery with a twist
involving a least-likely detective, a
disillusioned, New York City musician named Gary
Morrissey. Gary finds himself involved in a
murder investigation of his own making when
shadows of government corruption and hints of
premeditated genocide are cast over a
friend’s murder. The author’s own
experiences are reflected in his lead character,
whose love for New York City and for its
less-than-attractive suburbs and citizens
emanates from every page and whose musical
knowledge and expertise provide a unique
background for the events that unfold.
Gary Morrissey, a working musician slowly
succumbing to a day job, has just learned of the
death of a mutual friend, session bass player
Devon Jones. The report comes via the person of
Martin Seddon, a good friend of Gary’s.
“Captain” Marty doesn’t believe
that the official story of Devon’s death is
truth. Although neither of the men have any idea
of what they can do to find the unofficial truth,
Gary feels a certain loyalty and a desire to help
Marty since he’d helped Gary recover and
cope after a nasty divorce.
Devon had been gunned down by police officers
during a response to what was purported to be a
loud domestic dispute. However, Devon had been
preoccupied with what he’d concluded to be a
large-scale drug dealing conspiracy and had been
in fear for his life. Were the police really
responsible? Had there been truth to his
conspiracy theory? More from a sense of duty to a
friend than any desire to get involved with what
could possibly be a high-stakes illegal empire,
Gary decides to ask a few questions.
Gary figures he can research Devon’s last
few months of life by visiting some of his haunts
and talking to those who knew him. Burdened by
his own emotional wounds and the prospect of a
new relationship with Lisa, a smart and
attractive young lady, Gary is pulled between
helping a friend and keeping Lisa and himself
from joining Devon on the obituary page. His
investigation, at first half-hearted and inept,
gradually gains a position of prominence in his
life as he crosses paths with a Yonkers Police
Department homicide detective with a skeleton
– literally – in his family closet, the
sergeant-at-arms of the Devil’s Own, a
small, local outlaw motorcycle club trying to
maintain an air of legality in a tough
neighborhood, and a high-roller drug czar who may
not be what he seems.
Gary is falling for Lisa contradicting his own
policy to avoid emotional dependence at all cost.
Lisa too finds herself developing an emotional
attachment that she says she doesn’t believe
exists in ‘real’ life. She also has a
secret that she is trying to keep Gary from
discovering.
Devon thought he had evidence in his possession
that would prove the existence of a wide-scale
government attempt to kill off the Baby Boomers
before they reach Social Security age. Why before
this age? His assumption was that the government
would want to do this rather than go bankrupt
paying out Social Security benefits to the
largest group of recipients ever. While Gary
feels this theoretical ‘conspiracy’ is
ludicrous, he becomes more and more convinced
that, although it might not have been the
government who had killed Devon, he just might
have had evidence of something, and that
something just possibly had been proven lethal.
About DEEP END:
Gary
Morrissey is a semi-professional musician. It’s
not that he doesn’t have the talent or the
technique to be professional. No, life has
dealt him a bad hand and he is incapable of
playing the cards successfully.
Rather than risk further failure, he relies on an
adequately lucrative dead-end day job to pay the
bills, occasionally performing ‘live’
gigs and padding his wallet with a commercial
recording session when he can’t escape it.
Divorce and a short-lived and bittersweet rebound
romance have left him emotionally exhausted. He
lives in a spacious apartment in an old building
located in South Yonkers, a neighborhood what
realtors would describe as
‘interesting.’
 He had taken up scuba
diving during more prosperous times. His
dive buddy from Open Water
certification—Dave, a
motorcyclist with a handgun—has reappeared
in Gary’s life and has managed to embroil
the two of them in a shady salvage operation
sponsored by a decidedly larcenous dive shop
owner named Felix. What could the waters of
Long Island Sound possibly conceal worth
salvaging? On a dive Felix had discovered
the wreck of what he believes is a schooner barge
nestled in a rocky area seldom visited by
boaters—Execution Rocks. [Schooner barges
were old sailing vessels rendered obsolete with
the advent of steam. These schooners were
stripped of their masts and the empty hulls used
as barges.] This schooner barge is
constructed in typical eighteenth and nineteenth
century fashion with large brass spikes holding
hull sheathing to the underlying structure.
Due to the wreck’s proximity to heavily
traversed waters, Felix plans to salvage this
brass at night. Gary and Dave are just the
guys to help. No one knows the name of the
schooner. In a nod to the pop culture, the guys
jokingly name the wreck the Eddie Fitz,
after the famous Great Lakes wreck, Edmund
Fitzgerald.
A few weeks into a series of
grueling night dives at the site, Gary surfaces
close to the pinnacle of the rocky formation and
makes a grisly discovery. A young
woman’s body is chained to the boulders
below the high tide mark.
After interrogation by all
the proper authorities, Gary is disgusted and
unnerved to find yet another representative of
the law enforcement community leaning against his
car in the Marina parking lot. Detective
Bradley O’Neil of the Yonkers PD is known
only too well by Gary. Three years
previous, O’Neil’s friend in the
homicide squad, Malcolm O’Brien had murdered
two of Gary’s fellow musicians and friends.
O’Neil has (correctly) surmised that Gary
had something to do with O’Brien’s
permanent removal from the Yonkers scene and
although out of his jurisdiction, he still wants
to exert whatever pressure he can on Gary. Gary
believes it is because of the O’Brien
connection and in a way he’s right.
O’Neil has been plagued
by murders committed within and outside the
shadow of his gold shield. He’s having
difficulty convincing his own department and
those in other jurisdictions that these killings
are related. None of the victims have
anything in common; there are no similar modes of
either death or subsequent disposal of the
victims’ remains. He’s made
himself something of a pariah throughout a list
of agencies. What he sees in these murders
is not the normal ‘common thread’.
His belief is that the brutality of the crimes
indicates a link. That is exactly why no
one will believe his postulations. Hey,
the City is a brutal place with brutal
perpetrators—the mantra he’s heard
from the Bronx to White Plains.
Brad O’Neil has wasted
too much of the department’s time trying to
tie a bunch of semi-cold cases together. He
feels Gary owes him quite a bit in that he had
never opened any kind of investigation of Gary re
O’Brien’s demise. Brad had felt
there might be evidence against Gary to be found.
Because of this, he feels he can force Gary into
a bit of indentured servitude by performing some
legwork for him.
Gary has been more than
happy to be below anyone’s radar for the
past three years and is very reticent to don the
tee shirt with the red target on it once again.
He’s also met Helen, a nice young woman for
whom he appears to have developed an emotional
attachment. Even so, Gary feels he
can’t escape Brad’s scheme without
risking more than would be by simply agreeing to
it. Brad shows Gary the case files on the
murders. It is a creep how of
dismemberment, mutilation, and
dissection—yet none of the victims died in a
particularly vicious fashion. Most are
poisonings or a small calibre gunshot wound to
the back of the head at close range. About half
the victims had been known to frequent four bars
in lower Westchester County and both Brad and
Gary conclude that these bars might reveal a
common thread. Gary’s assignment:
check the bars, get a feel for them.
To further complicate
Gary’s world, a studio session leads to an
invitation to play with a Blind Benny Beausoleil,
a very hot and popular bluesman in New Orleans.
Benny owns a club and fronts the house band.
He has heard Gary play and feels Gary has the
chops to replace the guitarist who he’d been
working with—a guitarist who had turned up
dead in Jackson Square Park.
Gary decides to side-step
Brad’s investigation and flies to New
Orleans taking Helen with him. Gary—and
most folks around him—are astounded that
Blind Benny has flown a little white boy down to
the Deep South to play in an all-Black blues
band. Couldn’t Benny find a suitable
(and better) guitar player in the
Mississippi Delta? Blind Benny has
been blind since birth and doesn’t see
people as black or white. He responds to
what’s in their souls and he finds Gary to
be sufficient in that respect.
Why? Why interest in
Gary? Why this interest in the wreck of a
small schooner barge? The trail leads to a Cajun
Kreuol voodoo cult with roots in the mountains of
Haiti and a wild ride for Gary as he tries to
keep both the law as well as a voracious murderer
from taking him out of the equation.
AVAILABLE NOW !
The Classic Guitar Method: Now in one volume, much
of what the novice classical guitarist will need to
know to lead him or her to the recital stage. From
proper instrument care and maintenance to the
necessary technical skills, musical mind-set, and
the standard repertoire—all exposed and explored
with enough detail and insight that the student will
wish to keep this book handy years to come as a
ready reference source.
With the aid of a good teacher, the student will
rapidly progress through The Classic Guitar Method
attaining technical proficiency and musical
eloquence.
This method stems from the need to incorporate a
number of schools into a single cohesive curriculum.
Years of honing a logical approach to the guitar and
the creation of music culminate in this volume. As a
self-proclaimed Disciple of Valdés-Blain , much of
that famed teacher's focus can be found in Mr.
Pellegrin's method.
ISBN: 978-1-4116-9442-2
Published by PAB Entertainment Group, P.O. Box 2369
Scotia, New York 12302
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DETAILS
Harry
G. Pellegrin
READ THIS LOW END
PRESS RELEASE!
is Published by Bedside Books, an imprint of
American Book Publishing.
ISBN
1-58982-074-6
LOW ENDCopyright
2000 Harry G. Pellegrin
In
God We Trust
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