Burned out on life, Lee Henry Oswald wants to be left alone. This former private investigator and veteran of the first Gulf war is working as a bartender in Dallas, living in an extended stay hotel after his house was destroyed in a fire. But his peace-seeking fantasy is short-lived. Two people desperately need his help.
“He’s someone who helps people out of jams,” says Crosshairs’ author Harry Hunsicker about his third Oswald thriller.
Anita Nazari, a contrary but brilliant medical researcher, is under threat of a shadowy-quasi-governmental operative. In an unrelated case, Oswald’s old army buddy is dying from cancer caused by Gulf War Syndrome, a syndrome characterized by a set of non-specific symptoms such as fatigue, neurological problems, post-traumatic stress. His friend’s problems stem back to exposure to an oil field fire during a mission he went on in Oswald’s place.
“Oswald is someone who can walk the line, who can work both sides of the law,” says Hunsicker. “He can’t escape what he’s destined to be.”
The story also deals with how we treat the environment. “We put a lot of poisons in the air—I’m not talking about the big industrial stuff,” says Hunsicker. “It’s the everyday household materials such as cleaning fluids and pesticides. I don’t think we understand what we’re doing to our environment.”
Harry Hunsicker is a fourth generation Texan from Dallas. He works as a commercial real estate appraiser and speaks on creative writing when he’s not writing his next Lee Henry Oswald mystery. His debut novel was nominated for a Shamus award, best first novel, in 2005. Read an excerpt of Crosshairs here.
