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My private detective series, Gunny Mac Private Detective features four unique characters and three side characters that could almost carry a story by themselves. Unique in the sense, each bring characteristics that convey strength, weakness, humor, and a hardness which allows them to fight and possibly die for their honor.

 

I didn't mean to take away from my protagonist Gunny Mac, but his personality made men of character want to be around him. I didn't plan on it being that way, it just happened. Now I'm stuck with characters who take the spotlight off of my main character.

 

My characters are men who grew up in the 1920s and 1930s and who have been thrust into WWII. My novels are not military novels, but novels of men   badly wounded and medically discharged from combat on Guadalcanal in 1942.

 

My main protagonist is Gunnery Sergeant Mac a career Marine who hates what he has been forced to become, a civilian. In a lot of ways he is a lost soul without his Marine Corps and now faces a world he knows little about.

 

Gunnery Sergeant Wojohowitz Mac's best friend who served with Mac for eighteen years. They are like brothers who will fight each other over anything, yet possess a familial love for each other that nothing can break. Both tough men who value honor more than life.

 

Lt. Burke, a Harvard graduate blueblood who grew up spoiled and without honor. A man possessing everything and yet decides nothing is worth the effort to keep. It takes the Navy to punish him and send him to Uncle Sam's Misguided Children (USMC) in the First Marine Division on Guadalcanal as a Forward Observer.  Here he seeks redemption for past mistakes learning to be a man; under the tutelage of Gunnery Sergeant Wojohowitz.

 

Padre McCaffery, a Jesuit priest, a padre in the First Marine Division on Guadalcanal. A hard drinking, cigar smoking, warrior for Christ who earns the Navy Cross on Guadalcanal fighting to save his wounded Marines. Shot in the head and leg he is not the same priest as before.

 

Sergeant Peterson  a young Marine of twenty, wounded in the head and eye who will follow Mac into hell and put out the fire.

 

Corporal Reynolds whose love and respect for Peterson and Mac will never end. They are his only family.

 

The snoz, whose big heart is only eclipsed by his huge proboscis. A former jockey he is a lost soul until Mac rescues him.

 

And last but not least Seadog the black lab puppy that helps Mac stay alive in the hospital with his puppy warmth and love.

 

In the last couple decades we have been swamped by movies of super hero’s...men and women who have super powers. I never really appreciated them because I was surrounded by men without super natural powers that did super natural things. Make believe super hero’s were fake and I could not relate.

 

I asked a thirty-year old why his age group loved super hero’s. He said because they didn't have real hero’s. I shook my head in sorrow and left.

 

That is why I started writing my detective series about the worlds greatest generation...my hero's who in times of trouble elevated themselves to super hero’s.
I hope you get to know my characters. They are based on my experiences and people I have been involved with or saw from a distance.

 

I hope if you read my novels you will experience that feeling you get when you take your eyes off the book close them and smile at these wonderful zany men who helped shape America in her times of need. God bless all of them on this Memorial Day. Everyone a super hero!