Historical Fiction Mystery Thriller
Date Published: 01-26-2026
Publisher: Bearss Lair Books
If the newspaper reported your death and no one questioned it, would you
correct the mistake… or take the lifeline?
Dan Driscoll is consumed by gambling debt, cornered by bookies and loan
sharks, forced to bet on one last scheme. When things turn violent and two
people are shot, his best friend, Stan Neumann, swallows what he suspects. He
can’t risk divulging a closely-held family secret.
Then a body washes up on the Lake Michigan shoreline, and the lake gives Dan
what the bookies never would: a way out. Authorities call it an accident and
list him as the drowning victim. For Dan, it’s an escape route delivered
in black ink.
He becomes a ghost, an imposter, a chameleon. But lies don’t stay
buried.
As America is pulled into World War II, Stan enlists, choosing duty on his
terms before the draft can rewrite his life. In Pearl Harbor, one chance
encounter dredges up a name he thought was long buried.
War changes everything, but it doesn’t erase unfinished business. And
when the truth demands to be heard, how long can a stolen life stay buried
before the past comes to collect?
Andy
looked around at the other tables and made sure he was out of earshot of anyone
else. Once squared in the booth, he cast a pretentious expression straight at
Dan and continued. “Nice little out-of-the-way bar you frequent here,
Danny-boy. Quaint. Bet you were as surprised to see us as we were at finding
this joint. However, I don’t think it’s in your best interest when the three of
us have to meet under these ... you know ... less than amicable circumstances.
Whadaya say, Tony? You agree?”
Andy’s
partner, with a thick weightlifter’s neck and shoulders, preoccupied himself
and remained unamused. He was scribbling in a ledger, more focused on figuring
this week’s vig.
“It’s bad form being behind on your payments,
you know. What’s worse? You made us come all this way and then ... we end up
leaving emptyhanded ... again. I mean, this place here ain’t exactly whatcha
call your neighborhood bar. Am I right, Danny? If I didn’t know better, finding
you here ... way out in the middle of nowhere ... I’d suspect you were trying to
hide from us.” Andy smirked with that shit-eating grin and continued in a lower
and less congenial tone. “Danny-boy ... our boss ... he don’t like welshers.
Tony and me ... we don’t like ‘em either. You know why? First, it makes us look
bad, like we’re slackers. Not doing our jobs. You better be paying attention
because you certainly not paying your debts here. And that, Danny-boy,
rankles my friend here.”
Dan’s
record with sports betting had not been as successful as he had hoped. Some
weeks he’d be way ahead. But then his ego started getting greedy. He’d look for
a few big wins by playing the long odds. Then he’d find himself in the hole,
clawed his way out of it, only to be back in it again, only deeper. He wasn’t
ever mindful of the saying, “If you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’ll
continue to get the same results you always got.” Now he was beholden to these two guys.
Dan
acknowledged, “Okay, okay. I’m a little behind, but I’ll have the money
tomorrow when I get paid.”
“You
mean from the Michillinda?”
Dan’s
reaction was a trifecta of visceral human physiology. As his expression froze,
his heart rate jumped, which caused his blood pressure to crescendo in his
ears. He forced his breathing to slow as nonchalantly as possible before
saying, “You ... you know where I work?”
Andy
smirked, took a big gulp from Dan’s beer glass, and said, “We make it a point
to know everything about our clients.” Andy let the gravity of the matter hit
home with Dan. “Tell you what. We’ll meet you there tomorrow, say ‘round about
3 o’clock. We take what you owe us, plus a little extra for our troubles, and
we’ll be on our way. Sound good?”
Dan’s
entire demeanor — his expression, posture, downcast eyes — had “I surrender”
written all over him. He replied, “Understood.”
Tony
folded his papers and got up from the booth to leave. While doing so, he leaned
in close to Dan’s ear and whispered a warning that reeked with bile-tainted
stale breath, “You do as Andy here says. Or else.”
While author Mark Bearss was setting the stage for his retirement, concerned
co-workers would ask, “What are you going to do when you’re not
working?” He found this question rather curious. It should have been
posed, “What are you going to do first?” Mark knew that if travel
was involved, he had had enough of commercial flights after 28 years of
teaching for the medical device industry. Mark yearned for road trips –
to visit those places he only saw from 38,000 feet. Little did he know that
wish journeyed down an unexpected fork in the road. He would become an author.
While conducting genealogy research, Mark discovered archived de-classified
military documents that revealed the name of a U.S. Navy destroyer his father
served aboard during WWII. The reason this was a poignant discovery was
because, while growing up in Grand Rapids, Michigan, his father made no
mention of this. Apart from being a U.S. Naval Reserve flight instructor, he
knew his father served aboard the carrier USS ESSEX. But in what capacity?
That, too, was not revealed. More discoveries materialized the further he dug.
In fact, there was a lot more his father didn’t mention. This
wasn’t unusual. Many WWII veterans didn’t talk about what happened
back then.
Because of the pandemic, the National Archives in St. Louis was closed and
rendered Lt. Bearss’ military records unavailable. Thus began a project
that challenged Mark’s research endeavors for over two years and about
5,000 miles on the road. The biographical sketch was sorted from creative
Internet search strings, history books, navy publications, and networking with
journalists, librarians, archivists, bloggers, aviation enthusiasts, museum
and historical society curators, navy veterans, relatives, and more. One
online resource that was instrumental in tracking his father’s journey
was the weekly newspaper published in the county where his parents grew up:
The Oceana Herald. It included a Local News section where family members and
organizations could submit a short blurb about a relative’s visit, a
social gathering, or – where a son or husband was currently stationed.
This project culminated in 2022 with Mark’s first publication titled,
Undisclosed Stories Discovered: Honoring the World War II Military Journey of
Lt. Joseph Ward Bearss, USNR. When asked what was one of the highlights
surrounding this story, he described the road trips to seek out and discover
places where his father lived, trained and was stationed during the war. What
prompted him to write this as a biography took place during a meeting with the
curator of the World War II Home Front Museum on St. Simons Island, Georgia.
St. Simons Naval Air Station was the site for the U.S. Naval Radar Training
Station, where Lt. Bearss was trained in shipboard radar operations, enemy
interception, and Fighter Direction. While the museum had ample archived
materials about the facility, it had very little documented about the
servicemembers who trained there.
Only 250 copies were printed. Mark went back on the road in his Class-B
motorhome and personally donated those copies to family members, friends and
relatives, the librarians, archivists, researchers, museums, curators,
historical societies, newspapers, The American Heritage Center, VFW Posts,
airport FBOs, and other assorted WWII enthusiasts in 12 states who helped in
his endeavors. It was a two-fold reward. Not only did his father’s story
finally become told, Mark experienced the pleasure of meeting all these
wonderful people who were his resources, advisors, collaborators, and
consultants. Up until that point, they were only names in an email contact
list.
You’re probably asking, “How is all this relevant to Mark’s
new novel, Cain’s Chameleon?” It was the research from The Oceana
Herald that planted the seed for this story. While perusing its issues, Mark
stumbled on two articles that piqued his curiosity. The first reported an
attempted murder in a home close to his family’s summer cottage on Lake
Michigan. The second reported a drowning victim that washed up on the beach
right where Mark and his friends used to play. Just two more stories never
divulged while growing up. He wondered, Were these two events related? Then
Mark decided — he would make them related.
Contact Links
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