Healey's Cave [Paperback]

Aaron Paul Lazar (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 15, 2010

Sam Moore's little brother vanished fifty years ago. No body. No answers. What Sam has is a boatload of guilt, since he failed to accompany Billy on his final, fateful bike ride. "...a delightfully diabolical mystery with a chilling paranormal plot. Exceptionally written, this book will capture readers with a unique chase for a murderer that transcends time and space." -- Joyce Handzo, for In the Library Reviews

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Aaron Paul Lazar writes to soothe his soul. The author of LeGarde Mysteries and Moore Mysteries enjoys the Genesee Valley countryside in upstate New York, where his characters embrace life, play with their dogs and grandkids, grow sumptuous gardens, and chase bad guys.

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Paladin Timeless; First Edition edition (August 15, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1606191624
• ISBN-13: 978-1606191620
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 8 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,548,123 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Aaron Paul Lazar wasn't always a mystery writer. It wasn't until eight members of his family and friends died within five years that the urge to write became overwhelming. "When my father died, I lost it. I needed an outlet, and writing provided the kind of solace I couldn't find elsewhere."

Lazar created the Gus LeGarde mystery series, with the founding novel, DOUBLE FORTÉ (2004), a chilling winter mystery set in the Genesee Valley of upstate New York. Like Lazar's father, protagonist Gus LeGarde is a classical music professor. Gus, a grandfather, gardener, chef, and nature lover, plays Chopin etudes to feed his soul and thinks of himself as a "Renaissance man caught in the 21st century."

The creation of the series lent Lazar the comfort he sought, yet in the process, a new passion was unleashed. Obsessed with his parallel universe, he now lives, breathes, and dreams about his characters, and has written ten LeGarde mysteries in eight years. (UPSTAGED - 2005; TREMOLO: CRY OF THE LOON - 2007 Twilight Times Books; MAZURKA - 2009 Twilight Times Books, FIRESONG - 2011, with more to come.) The author is currently working on his sixteenth novel.

One day while rototilling his gardens, Lazar unearthed a green cat's eye marble, which prompted the new paranormal mystery series featuring Sam Moore, retired country doctor and passionate gardener. The green marble, a powerful talisman, connects all three of the books in the series, whisking Sam back in time to uncover his brother's dreadful fate fifty years earlier. (HEALEY'S CAVE, 2010; TERROR COMES KNOCKING, 2011; FOR KEEPS, 2012) Lazar intends to continue both series.

Lazar's books feature breathless chase scenes, nasty villains, and taut suspense, but are also intensely human stories, replete with kids, dogs, horses, food, romance, and humor. The author calls them, "country mysteries," although reviewers have dubbed them "literary mysteries."

"It seems as though every image ever impressed upon my brain finds its way into my work. Whether it's the light dancing through stained-glass windows in a Parisian chapel, curly slate-green lichen covering a boulder at the edge of a pond in Maine, or hoarfrost dangling from a cherry tree branch in mid-winter, these images burrow into my memory cells. In time they bubble back, persistently itching, until they are poured out on the page."

In 2009, Kodak gave him up for grabs, and during the year off before he landed in his coveted new job with KB America, he had time to explore and reconnect with his environment. Little did he know that several trips to the Adirondack Mountains would reawaken his passion for that part of the country. Two new books were written in that timeframe, starting yet another mystery series, Tall Pines Mysteries. The first two books in the series are due out in the late 2011 early 2012 timeframe. Watch for FOR THE BIRDS and ESSENTIALLY YOURS, coming soon.

The author lives on a ridge overlooking the Genesee Valley in upstate New York with his wife, mother-in-law, two dogs, and cat. He finds grandfathering one of the most precious and important times of life, and spends as much time as possible with Julian, Gordon, Aiden, and Isabella.

Lazar maintains several websites and blogs, was the Gather Saturday Writing Essential host for three years, writes his monthly "Seedlings" columns for the Voice in the Dark literary journal and the Future Mystery Anthology Magazine. He has been published in Absolute Write as well as The Great Mystery and Suspense Magazine. See excerpts and reviews here:

www.legardemysteries.com
www.mooremysteries.com
www.murderby4.blogspot.com
www.aplazar.gather.com
www.aaronlazar.blogspot.com

Contact him at [e-mail].


LEGARDE MYSTERIES
DOUBLE FORTE' (2004)
UPSTAGED (2005)
TREMOLO: CRY OF THE LOON (2007)
MAZURKA (2009)
FIRESONG (2011)

MOORE MYSTERIES
HEALEY'S CAVE (2010)
TERROR COMES KNOCKING (2011)
FOR KEEPS (2012)

TALL PINES MYSTERIES
FOR THE BIRDS (2011)
ESSENTIALLY YOURS (2012)


Preditors & Editors Readers Choice Award - 2nd place 2011* Winner of Carolyn Howard Johnsons' 9th Annual Noble (Not Nobel!) Prize for Literature 2011 * Finalist Allbooks Editors Choice Awards 2011 * Preditors&Editors Top 10 Finalist * Yolanda Renee's Top Ten Books 2008 * MYSHELF Top Ten Reads 2008 * Writers' Digest Top 101 Website Award 2009 & 2010

www.legardemysteries.com
www.mooremysteries.com
www.murderby4.blogspot.com
www.aaronlazar.blogspot.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Aaron Paul Lazar is a master storyteller, August 19, 2010

By 

Natalie Neal (Idaho, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Healey's Cave (Kindle Edition)

I love how Aaron Paul Lazar has drawn the characters in his book. He sketches the relationship of man and wife in soft strokes, like a lovely pen and ink drawing on fine paper. A grandparent taking delight in the love of his grandchildren is a pastel portrait framed in gold. Childhood friendships drenched in sepia tones are like old photographs in a long forgotten album taken from the shelf. I also like the pace of the book. Nothing is rushed. There is no leap headlong into a maze of frantic action nor is there a plunge into needless back-story. There is a gracious and soft unfolding of detail, layer upon layer, as if one were looking at a painting of a lush landscape. Characters reveal themselves and the story unfolds easily, effortlessly. Sam Moore is a methodical man, used to figuring out mysteries in life by using tried and true principles. He has honed his solid intellect during many years as a physician and isn't prone to imagining things. But when Sam discovers a marble in the soft friable earth of his garden, he begins to think he may be going crazy. The glowing cat's eye marble seems to flash scenes of his boyhood before his eyes, scenes with his younger brother Billy, who had been so dear, the brother whose disappearance had left behind an unsolved mystery and a hole in Sam Moore's heart. Was his brother speaking to him from across the void? As we look over Sam Moore's shoulder into the fire of the green marble, we are drawn with him into an experience of the paranormal, seeing into the unseen worlds he unearths, never to rest until we know the whole truth about what happened to his brother Billy- and to the others. The sense of intrigue never dims in this book. I love a good story and this is one of the best I have read in a very long time.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I Loved My First Aaron Paul Lazar Novel!, December 3, 2010

By 

Glenda A Bixler "Glenda" (Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Healey's Cave (Paperback)

My thanks to the author's wife who proposed that the author write a book from the killer's point of view...

And a new series was born! Healey's Cave by Aaron Paul Lazar, who is known for his LeGarde Mystery series, declared he was just minding his own business when his wife spoke...In fact, he laughed!

Now his wife loves psychological thrillers which I do too, so I knew she was on to something...especially since, at that time, I hadn't read any of Lazar's books! I had met Aaron at a Facebook Reviewer's Roundup Author Interview and immediately knew I would like the man...you know, one of those guys that is fun and easy to talk to...so that's how he wound up as my December Spotlighted Author at Book Reader's Heaven and I was invited to have a Lazar marathon...hmmm, maybe I even volunteered, not sure now!

Anyway, Healey's Cave is his latest book, as well as being the first Sam Moore Mystery. I loved it!

Lazar has a style of writing that pulls readers into the lives, as well as the setting of his books; he's a natural storyteller. He spends time sharing about nature and talks knowledgeably about the plants, flowers, and, in this case, the caves that you can tell he has explored.

In fact, the "green marble series," was conceptually created when he found a green marble, a cat's eye, unearthed while he was rototilling! As with many of us, the marble took him back to childhood and he started to wonder about the little boy or girl who lost it...

And that is how the main character was whisked back in time...

Sam Moore was himself a grandfather when he found the marble. His first thought was whether it might have belonged to his brother who had disappeared 50 years ago. It had been 50 years of longing to know the truth of what had happened to him. Was he dead or alive? Had he fallen and died somewhere, all alone, never to be found, or had he been kidnapped, perhaps raised by somebody else and still alive somewhere. While he had always hoped for the latter, he knew that if at all possible, now after this long, he would have come back to find his family...

Sam was a little worried that he would become entangled in his memories, for now he had retired from his practice and he was used to being active most of his days. So he had turned to the outside to work his time away doing what he loved. Besides, his wife, Rachel, needed him to keep out of her way. She was wheel-chair bound and needed extra rest, but she also needed to continue to maintain her home and do the things she had always managed in the past. Sam owed Rachel his love and her space...

It was Billy's birthday; he would be 61. Sam silently wished him "Happy Birthday, buddy," and, for the first time, reached into his pocket and fingered the green marble...

That first visit to the past took him onto his orange school bus...Sam and Billy had just gotten off and were waving at the remaining kids. It didn't take long before Manfred Healey speeded by in his car, screaming for them to get out of his way...

Sam had been in the past for an hour and a half...when he realized time had gone by; he thought he had fallen asleep...

But it brought back memories even more and he thought about his friends from that time and how Billy, though younger, had always been his best friend and went wherever the others went. And, of course, Healey was hated by all of them. Even now, Sam believed that Healey had taken Billy!

Now, for various reasons, all the players from that year were back in town. And Sam was being taken back to the past, finally realizing that the time travel seemed to be telling him something and that Billy was trying to communicate!

But...things were also happening in the present. Sam's house had been broken into, for instance, and all of Billy's toys had been stolen from the attic! Now, they were being used, apparently, to play with Sam's mind--make him think he was experiencing a breakdown... Nightmares had returned and it seemed that he was learning more and more about what had happened...just not who had been responsible!

Someone murdered little boys, and Sam was now afraid for his grandsons!

What a great start to the green marble series! Sam is a wonderful, older lead character, whose love of family is clearly primary to his life. The touch of the paranormal and time travel just makes a great book more interesting. One of the things I quickly noted is that Lazar's books can be considered "G" rating...and I'll cheerfully pass them on to my younger family members to enjoy!

By the way, I'm halfway into the first LeGarde book...All I can say is that, thankfully, I don't have to choose which I enjoy more! Lazar has already made it to my personal must-read author list! Watch for reviews of more of his books as December continues...You may find that you'll want to use Lazar's books as stocking stuffers! What a cool gift for anyone in the family who loves mystery and suspense...and so much more!

Book Provided Via
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G. A. Bixler

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sam Moore's having a bad hair day, November 14, 2010

By 

Kim Smith "Kim Smith" (Memphis TN, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Healey's Cave (Paperback)

Sam Moore is a gardener extraordinaire. But when he finds a marble in his knotweed patch, life changes. The strange green marble carries Sam on wild excursions into his past, where a long-time mystery just waits on being answered. But will Sam live long enough to unravel the case of his missing brother?

Aaron Lazar has crafted a truly wonderful tale of suspense, nostalgia, and supernatural occurences. I loved the time in the garden, written by a man who obviously knows his stuff and felt like the trips back into his past were well-done and moved the story forward to its tense conclusion.

This was my first Sam Moore mystery but it won't be my last!