First novel hot off the press

By JoAn Bjarko
North Forty News

It's a small world full of interesting characters, who coincidentally or not meet on the pages of Edmund Caffrey's first novel.

The 78-year-old Linden Lake resident is just getting started, too. When the novel closes, the chief character of "The Black Fox," retired New York detective David Guilfoyle, is poised to return in another story set in a very familiar city and canyon in northern Colorado.

Though this is his first novel, Caffrey is an old hand at publishing. He co-owned the newspaper Western Mobile News for eight years and wrote a nonfiction book, "As the Golden Years Lose Their Hue: Issues and Answers on Aging," in 2001.

Having a colorful background himself, Caffrey uses his characters in "The Black Fox" to expound on his observations of the personality foibles of everyday men and women. Their lives and loves, deceptions and confessions provide the underpinning for a plot that moves from Colorado to New York City and back again.

Jesse Finch is a penurious middle-aged lawn maintenance company owner who blames his only child for his wife's death in childbirth.

The son, Ted Finch, grows up with little love but with a knack for making money through hard work and a few small lies.

Mabel Bender, a young widow who lives on a small farm on the eastern plains, encounters the elder Finch at a small-town church service. Their May-December relationship furthers the divide between father and son.

There's also an East Coast drug dealer, a single and successful mother, her all-business daughter and the private eye. The reader bonus is a fleeting glance of a mysterious black fox and a puzzling pony-tailed stranger.

The first printing of "The Black Fox," with a high-quality embossed soft cover, sells for $22.95, including shipping and handling. Checks or money orders may be mailed to 749 S. Lemay A3, PMB 358, Fort Collins, CO 80524-3251.