Mudfoot and Tori

David Mudfoot finds gold for the very rich, and very secretive, Alicia and Dawson Wicks. Mudfoot has survived Alaskan winters, bear attacks, and claim jumpers. He is utterly lethal in a fight.

He would rather sit at his computer than go on a date. His wolf-like dog rides around with him in Mudfoot's ugly pickup truck. Mudfoot's one of the world's foremost targets for kidnappers, not to mention the terrorists who will soon try to kill him.

And now God is sending this overly complicated man to Victoria Winston.

We at MIKVELK had a lot of fun with this novel because we welcome political satire. We like all of Randall Jarmon's stories, but this one has Dawson and Alicia Wicks in it. That makes it a little like a tall tale. If you ever thought a staunchly conservative Paul Bunyan might be cool, you ought to meet Dawson Wicks.

Dawson's a brilliant mountain man who finds gold so often that he holds rock star status among prospectors and mining companies. He's married to Alicia Wicks, a Dallas debutante with both a CPA and a law degree. She invests what Dawson finds. The two are now like a little commercial bank, except that they lend to nation states rather than to small businesses. Almost nobody on Earth is richer.

David Mudfoot is Dawson Wicks' prot嶲? Mudfoot also started out poor, also finds gold reliably, and also will need years of Alicia's patient teaching to acquire social graces. He might someday even learn to dance.

The Wickses bail out socialist Montshire, which is still New England's poorest state. In return, they get rights to look for gold in a vast stretch of forest covering Montshire's Greenish Hills. Nobody but Dawson Wicks thinks there's much there besides mosquitoes, black flies, and pine trees.

Montshire also gives the Wickses de facto ownership of pathetic little Montshire Agricultural & Military University (MAMU). It has the only fiber optic line in the region, and Mudfoot needs that for the computer modeling he and Dawson do.

Alicia Wicks brings in her former law school roommate, and longtime friend, Lady Bytes Riley to oversee MAMU. What transpires is an ongoing struggle between perhaps the worst of Academe and perhaps the best of corporate America. We, ourselves, would buy this novel just to follow Lady Bytes Riley. None of us at Mikvelk-not even Randall Jarmon, himself-foresaw how she'd emerge as so strong a character.

There's more. The registrar at MAMU runs a clandestine assimilation business on behalf of a major terrorist group. He creates for terrorists from abroad the false academic backgrounds they will need to stay in America undetected. Accordingly, the area David Mudfoot will prospect in has just become an entry point and training ground for some of the world's most dangerous killers.

Tori Winston owns the little restaurant next to MAMU. That puts her at ground zero for all the action to come. Tori is about Mudfoot's age, single, very nice, and very smart. She's a successful small businesswoman despite socialist Montshire's ridiculously high taxes and absurdly onerous regulation. She has a big, wolf-like dog of her own. Tori's duplex is the only place in town where Mudfoot can stay.

That's the story's beginning. We think what follows will get your pulse going and your pages turning. We doubt you'll see the ending coming, and we think you'll like it when it arrives. You might even want to read that part twice.

Mikvelk Publishing, LLC