Blog Archives
Sympathetic Characters
Moving Targets follows a private investigator as a stolen-artifacts case and a decades-old murder pull him into a web of corruption, grief, friendship, and the difficult work of rebuilding a life after loss. What inspired Miles Darien as a detective, especially his emotional depth and old-fashioned investigative instincts?
My love of detective stories started in the same familiar fashion as it did for so many others: Being intrigued by the exploits of Sherlock Holmes stories as a young person, I immediately began trying to figure out the cases before reading the outcome. It set me on a path of being a detective for a good detective story. As both my reading and my real experience base expanded, I became acutely aware of how the emotional elements of everyday life intersected everything we do and the people we become. The cases that a private investigator deals with come with heightened amounts of those same elements. I wanted Miles to experience those things as well, both empathetically and personally. That’s where dramas are born.
The novel balances multiple mysteries with Miles’s grief and personal healing. How did you decide how much space to give the cases versus his inner life?
I have always viewed the cases and Miles’s life to be inextricably linked. So, there was no conscious effort on my part to give a certain amount of space to one or the other. His cases were both a refuge and a challenge when mixed with what was happening in his non-work life. Whatever ended up on the page happened organically.
Miles’s circle of friends gives the book a strong sense of community. Were any of those relationships inspired by real friendships or places?
Friendships have always been extremely valuable commodities for me. The qualities I’ve admired in my friends play a big part in how I develop the sympathetic characters in my books. Conversely, negative behaviors I observe in people I encounter often develop into the less desirable characters. Taking bits and pieces of all of those people and molding them into a story appropriate character is key to creating a believable storyline. As for places, I’ve been fortunate to travel extensively in my life which gives me more diverse places and personalities to draw upon.
The ending offers hope without fully resolving Miles’s grief. Was it important to you to avoid a neat emotional conclusion?
Absolutely. I felt it was important to provide readers with some amount of a lift at the end but, at the same time, acknowledge that grief doesn’t just vanish. It finds an emotional refuge somewhere in a person’s mind, but it is always there lurking in the background. As Miles moves forward, he will deal with it less on a daily basis, but it can always be recalled, often at an inopportune time. Those times will come in handy as elements of his ongoing story.
Author Links: GoodReads | X (Twitter) | Facebook | Website | Instagram | Amazon
The investigation takes Miles and his life-partner FBI Agent Ken Caldwell, to Wisconsin’s Northwoods where the ongoing distrust between the indigenous and white populations is palpable. The case suddenly takes a deadly turn when its resolution leaves a new tragic trail of death. Miles is forced to decide whether he can continue his work while, at the same time, overcoming his guilt and paralyzing sadness. That dilemma drives him to make the biggest decision of his life.
Moving Targets
Moving Targets is a detective thriller about Miles Darien, a Lakeville, Wisconsin private investigator whose cases keep pulling him toward bigger questions about loyalty, justice, grief, and what it means to build a life with other people. It opens like a classic PI story, with stolen church artifacts and Miles’s quiet vow, “I will find them,” but it grows into something more personal and more emotionally loaded.
The book works best when it lets Miles investigate through conversation, observation, and old-fashioned persistence. The Holy Trinity case is a smart early mystery, full of fingerprints, misdirection, and small details that matter. Then the cold case involving Charles Powler shifts the story into darker territory, bringing in land, mining interests, racism, corruption, and violence. The author gives the investigations a steady, procedural rhythm without making them feel cold.
What gives the novel its heart is Miles’s circle: Ken, Ryan, Anne, Carl, George, Cora, Bobbie, Olivia, and Molly. Their banter makes the book feel lived-in, like you’re dropping into an ongoing community rather than just following a lone detective from clue to clue.
Moving Targets becomes a book about survival as much as solving crimes. Miles keeps working, but the work doesn’t magically fix him. The later sections, including the New York wedding, the Robin subplot, therapy, the move into Carl’s office, and the brief Santa Fe trip, show him trying to find a shape for his life after loss. The final discovery gives the ending a gentle lift without pretending grief is neatly resolved.
Moving Targets is a warm, character-driven detective thriller with several mysteries braided through one man’s changing life. It’s strongest when the cases and relationships feed each other, because Miles’s talent as an investigator comes from the same place as his friendships: he notices things, he cares, and he follows through. The book is part mystery, part community portrait, and part grief story, and that mix gives it more emotional weight than a standard case-of-the-week thriller.
Pages: 327 | ASIN: B0FNC4QS6Q
