When NYPD detective Jacob Jennings signs on for a three-year tour with the US Army's Military Intelligence unit, he expects to be deployed to Vietnam like his father before him. Instead, Jennings finds himself working a complex undercover sting in cooperation with the Chinese police.
The drug, cherry berry is the hot new topic on the streets of Hong Kong, and while dealers and gang members insist the drug is real, no one seems to have seen it and it is not for sale there. All that's known is it's powerfully addictive, made in Hong Kong, and it causes horrifying physical side effects to certain users.
Infiltrating the Chinese Blood gang and posing as an American hustler, Jacob draws closer to the drug's suspected creator, the high-ranking medical research scientist Dr. Wo Ling Cheung. Cheung's association with Jerry Baofung, a much-feared sorcerer, is unclear to others but not to Jennings.
Having been raised by his grandmother teaching him the occult, Jacob is unwilling to dismiss Baofung's power as superstitious fakery. Sorcery, Jacob believes is the obvious contribution Baofung would make to the creation of cherry berry.
Tracking this drug to its source, Jacob realizes he's running out of time because Cheung plans to unleash it on the streets of New York where he is already catering the drug to a dangerous clientele with unusual tastes and compulsions.
About the Author: J. W. Durrah is a man of many talents. A college instructor in essay writing, he graduated from Columbia University in 1982 with a BA in film, writing, and psychology, earning an MFA from New York University in 1984 before being accepted into NYU's prestigious dramatic writing program.
While an undergraduate at Columbia, Durrah wrote an essay on The Pawnbroker, a Rod Steiger movie. Impressed by the essay, his film professor entered it into the archives at the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art.
Durrah published his first short story, "Something to Remember," in Essence Magazine in 1972. He won second place in a writing competition, "America's Finest Novel" hosted by the Writers Foundation in Sarasota, Florida, for his novel Dirges of the Still Waters.
An avid fencer and competitive archer, Durrah also writes haiku and loves reading. He is a Board Certified clinical hypnotist with twenty years' experience.
