The Mark of Cain

For Eli Cain, the quiet of the Kansas prairie was supposed to be a sanctuary. Instead, it became a graveyard.
A burned-out police chief running from the ghosts of Northwood, New York, Eli traded his gold shield for a private investigator’s shingle in a drafty office above an Aggieville bookstore. He sought a simpler kind of evil, but in the heart of the Flint Hills, he discovers that the “quiet” of a small town doesn’t heal—it suffocates.
When a local widow’s son vanishes, Eli is pulled into a labyrinth of corporate feudalism and century-old sins. At the center of the mystery lies Agri-Corp, a modern monolith intent on poisoning the soil and the soul of the community, and the Beaumont family, whose empire is built upon a “Barren Field” of buried secrets and stolen water.
Haunted by his past and marked by a literal brand of fire and iron, Eli realizes he cannot sit in the pews with the flock he protects. He is the Shepherd with the Rod—a man who carries the dark within him to keep the wolves at bay.
From the high-tech corridors of corporate fortresses to the concrete depths of a Cold War missile silo, The Mark of Cain is a visceral, contemporary noir thriller. It is a story of moral penance, geological mystery, and the violent realization that the truth is often the only thing that can burn a kingdom down.

Key Metadata for ISBN Registration
Genre: Fiction / Thrillers / Crime

Secondary Genre: Fiction / Noir / Small Town & Rural

Themes: Justice, Penance, Corporate Corruption, Family Secrets, Environmental Crime.

Tone: Gritty, Atmospheric, Contemporary Noir.

Setting: Aggieville, Kansas; The Flint Hills.