Excerpt and Giveaway: The Cuts that Cure, A Suspense and Thriller Novel

I’m excited to feature an exclusive excerpt from the novel The Cuts that Cure by Arthur Herbert. You get a first glimpse of his novel and you also get the chance to win a copy for yourself.

About the Book, The Cuts that Cure

Alex Brantley is a burned-out surgeon whose desperation to start a new life outside of medicine leads him to settle in a sleepy Texas town close to the Mexican border, a town that has a dark side. Its secrets and his own past catch up with him as traits he thought he’d buried in the deserts on the frontiers of the border rise up again to haunt him.

To the citizens of Three Rivers, Henry Wallis appears to be a normal Texas teenager: a lean, quiet kid from a good family whose life seems to center around running cross-country, his first girlfriend, and Friday night football. That Henry is a cultivated illusion, however, a disguise he wears to conceal his demons. Both meticulous and brutally cruel, he manages to hide his sadistic indulgences from the world, but with that success, his impulses grow stronger until one day when a vagrant is found murdered.

When Alex and Henry’s paths cross, it starts a domino effect which leads to mangled lives and chilling choices made in the shadows along la frontera, where everything is negotiable. 

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An Excerpt of The Cuts that Cure

A lightning strike illuminated the interior of Detective Rodrigo Lozano’s unmarked car in Juan Seguin’s parking lot, followed immediately by the boom of thunder. The body found by a park employee prior to the start of this downpour looked to have been there a while, he’d been told, so he figured a few more minutes’ delay while waiting to see if the worst of this blew over wouldn’t hurt anything. To pass the time, he unwrapped the audio CD boxset of the first Harry Potter book given him by his daughter.

Not having his bifocals on, he held the boxset at arm’s length, eyebrows arched and the corners of his mouth downturned as he scanned the blurb. Muggles and magic? Not his usual thing, but speaking the language would be a good way to bond with his nine-year-old grandson who was obsessed with that universe.

Fifty-nine years old, Lozano wore the swollen, bumpy nose that bespoke his years as an alcoholic. He’d been sober for the last twelve after suffering a Damascene moment, one for which he still thanked God daily. In the decades leading up to that day, he’d hid his alcohol intake from his wife, Anette, by drinking in a machine shop he’d built onto the side of his garage. She was uncomfortable in the workshop and rarely visited, as though the miter saw and metal lathe might spring to life autonomously. He drank out there most nights undisturbed, and the dead soldiers accumulated quickly. In his drunken laziness, he often procrastinated on their disposal.

One Monday night he took his empties to the curb for a Tuesday morning pickup, and the numerous bags filled the garbage can beyond capacity. Tired and drunk, bleary and languid, he overstuffed the can, heaping bags so high the lid sat at a forty-five degree angle. He considered the problem for a moment, then shrugged and went to bed.

Overnight, however, a dog or raccoon whom he’d later consider to be sent by God tipped the can over, shredding the bags and scattering the evidence of his habit.

Lozano came out in the morning to get the newspaper with his usual hangover, clad in bathrobe and slippers, only to find piles of empty beer cans and whiskey bottles scattered along the gutter, his yard, and his driveway. Cans that had landed in the street lay squashed flat by passing cars, and two empty Jack Daniels bottles by the base of his mailbox had been politely set upright by the mailman.

The quantity of empty containers of alcohol would have embarrassed a fraternity cleaning up after a toga party. Checking his watch, he realized this tableau had been in plain sight of his neighbors and the passing world for several hours.

Shoveling the bottles and cans into new bags as heads turned in cars driving to work and school, a light had gone off in his head telling him that this wasn’t normal.

That was close enough to bottom for him. He’d called in sick that morning and attended his first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. He still attended faithfully, going to at least one meeting a week and acting as a sponsor for two other cops.

Both his glasses and his girth were heavyset, and after thirty-three years on the force his retirement plans were starting to seem less abstract. While he didn’t say it around the precinct, he secretly felt it couldn’t come quickly enough. He just didn’t have the energy that he used to have five, hell, even three years ago. Anette was convinced after listening to one too many commercials that he was “Low-T” and kept insisting that he get checked. As far as he was concerned, Low-T was just code for getting old.

After fifteen minutes in the car, the pounding rain didn’t show any signs of letting up. Lozano sighed and hit pause. He found his glasses, zipped up the yellow rain slicker with SAPD stenciled on the back in large black letters and flipped up the hood. Swapping his loafers for rubber boots, he steeled himself before popping the car door enough to quickly open an umbrella and walked out into the pelting rain.

He legged it around an ambulance parked in the spot closest to the trailhead, and as the backs of his thighs became damp he broke into a trot, headed in the direction of a small pavilion covering a single picnic table. Once under the pavilion, Lozano had just collapsed his umbrella when a Parks Department vehicle drove by too fast, throwing a wall of spray on him.

A gangly young man with shaggy blonde hair that stuck to his cheeks like a Centurion’s helmet sat before him on the picnic table. His soul patch wicked water down his chin, and his gray Parks Department uniform—open to his navel and framing a puka necklace—now clung to his torso like he’d stepped out of the shower. He was shivering despite the warmth of the rain.

The downpour thrummed on the pavilion’s tin roof, amplified so that Lozano had to raise his voice. “Morning, sir. I’m Detective Lozano. You the man who called this in?”

A forlorn, “Yeah.”

“Your name?”

“Mitchell. Mitchell Gansereit.”

“Mr. Gansereit, can you tell me what happened? Start from the beginning.”

“Me and Colin McPherson was detailed to pick up some trash out of the crick that runs through the back side of the park. We knew it was ’posed to rain today so we wanted to hurry up and get to it so’s we didn’t get soaked.

“We was at it for couple’a hours and was getting close to done when a man come up to us while we was working back there. He said he was jogging on the other side of the park over where all them cedars is and that he come up on a smell that was somethin’ awful, like somethin’ died.”

About the Author, Arthur Herbert

Arthur Herbert was born and raised in small town Texas. He worked on offshore oil rigs, as a bartender, a landscaper at a trailer park, and as a social worker before going to medical school. He chose to do a residency in general surgery, followed by a fellowship in critical care and trauma surgery. For the last seventeen years, he’s worked as a trauma and burn surgeon, operating on all ages of injured patients. He continues to run a thriving practice.

His debut novel, The Cuts that Cure, will be published by White Bird Publishing in Austin Texas on May 11, 2021. He has begun work on his second novel. Arthur currently lives in New Orleans, with his wife Amy and their dogs. Arthur loves hearing from readers, so don’t hesitate to email him at arthur@arthurherbertwriter.com.

Visit his website at: https://arthurherbertwriter.com/

Now you can enter for your chance to win a physical copy of the book The Cuts that Cure by Arthur Herbert. Enter via Rafflecopter below. Giveaway ends on 5/2. US only entrants please.

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