M H Burton

Murder Goes for the Green: a Zach Roper and the Thai Princess Mystery M H Burton

Publisher Marketing: Zach Roper and the Thai Princess's last adventure Murder Takes a Mulligan got them a lot deeper into Thai politics than they had bargained for. They're confident that they will stay out of Thai politics this time because they're no longer in Thailand, but the good old USA, where politics are much more straightforward and less deadly....or are they? Once again they mean to concentrate strictly on golf, at least when they aren't preoccupied with sex, no murders, no crimes, no politics...no more 'cases' to solve. They get off to a promising start with an invitation to something called a "Fiesta de Golfo" at a gated community in the Arizona desert where they quickly find that golf takes a back seat to socializing, investment seminars, and booze. Zach has to rescue the Thai Princess as she threatens to drift away on a sea of margaritas and meatballs while the golf action on the 'duffer-ville' course is far less than stellar. Both of them are off their games but they still manage to hustle some bucks from the filthy rich amateurs. The Thai Princess revives her youthful ability to outdrink her female opponents and whip them while in an alcoholic haze, staggering home to Zach with her panties stuffed with loot. After more than a week of too much food, too much booze, almost too much good lovemaking, and too little good golf, Zach tries to drag the Thai Princess away from it all for an early morning practice session so that they won't embarrass themselves in the final round of pro-on-pro competition. She's late, delayed by her search for a pair of golf shorts she can still squeeze into after all the excess, and Roper is pissed, so he goes off alone to practice his sand shots but finds the trap occupied...by a dying man who has been hit over the head with a golf club. The man keeps repeating the same phrase over and over again, but the phrase isn't in English so all Roper can do is memorize it after he calls for the medics. The man in the trap dies before they can get there. While Zach awaits their arrival he studies the crime scene. It certainly has been a crime. The man did not hit himself in the head with a golf club. Not even the most frustrated golfer would commit suicide with a sand wedge. But who did it? And why? A plump, tardy Thai Princess waddles to the scene and figures out what the dying man kept repeating. It's cryptic but at least it's a start. Not much of a start as the identification found on the body says he's a Mexican-American greens keeper and his last words were in Lao. In all the confusion Zach realizes that the international tycoon who was to meet him and the Princess for some early morning practice and talk is a no show. Could there be a connection? It seems possible as they soon find out that he has just flown off in his Learjet to points unknown leaving behind no explanation. It takes a lot of digging by Zach and the Thai Princess to get a grip on who killed the man in the trap, and why. Contributor Bio:  Burton, M H M H Burton was born in 1945 the son of a cheese maker with a 5th grade education, grandson of a barely literate blacksmith-failed farmer-fiddler-singer-story teller, and great grandson of an illiterate lead miner who fled Ireland in 1851 to escape the Potato Famine. With such a distinguished background how could he be anything but a great writer? That's what I thought when I was 18, but like most things people think when they are 18, it was dead wrong. I did manage to excel to the extent that I was the first of my kin to graduate from college, though that only got me an invite from my draft board to the Vietnam War. Fearing that I would be too large a target as an infantryman I opted for a 'voluntary' enlistment and ended up a translator/interpreter in Thailand. Then it was back to the States and a year of unemployment before I stumbed into Computer Software Development and Systems Analysis, which kept me busy for 30 years. Finally at age 60 to writing. Since I no longer wanted to be famous I could start small with some short stories. Then a collection of stories from my military days became "Tales of Ramasun" in honor of the signal intelligence gathering base in (then) remote NE Thailand where I spent most of my soldiering time. Having shucked the burden of fame, writing has become fun, and relatively easy. I spend my winters at my Thai wife's place in Thailand and summers at our small, Spartan Minnesota lake cabin. A cabin no unlike Col. Jack's place in "Money Troubled."