Stripping Down Moonlight

Today, Vincent Zandri is visiting The Naked Hero and “Stripping Down” Richard “Dick” Moonlight of Moonlight Falls.

Moonlight is a suicide survivor who now must cope with a small piece of .22 caliber bullet lodged in his brain. Because it’s pressed up against his cerebral cortex he has trouble making good decisions and he suffers on occasion from short-term memory loss. In times of stress he passes out. He could suffer a major stroke or die at any moment. So time means little to him. When he makes the wrong decision to sleep with his former boss’s wife and she later turns up brutally murdered, he believes it’s possible he might have killed her and just can’t remember it.

40-something Richard Moonlight has lost his wife and his son through a bad divorce. And now his former partner in the Albany Police Department has taken his place as the patriarch of the family. Driven to despair, Moonlight tried to commit suicide. But he didn’t try hard enough. And now, after botching an attempt at shooting himself he has to live with a piece of bullet in his brain. While it often causes him to make the wrong decisions or lose his short term memory, he nonetheless wishes to do the right thing. When his lover is found brutally murdered he will stop at nothing to see that the killer is found, even if the killer ends up being himself.

Moonlight is in great shape, a weight lifter and runner due to the health program his GP put him on after his recovery. But he still likes his “Jack.” He’s head-shaved bald and bears a small scar beside his right earlobe. He often wears dark lace-up combat boots, jeans, black leather jacket and motorcycle sunglasses.

Richard Moonlight will do whatever it takes to find his lover’s killer, even if he has to go to prison or even die doing it.

Your Herculean Task:

Would you willingly break the law in order to find a killer?

Vincent Zandri is an award-winning novelist, essayist and freelance photojournalist. His novel As Catch Can (Delacorte) was touted in two pre-publication articles by Publishers Weekly and was called “Brilliant” upon its publication by The New York Post. The Boston Herald attributed it as “The most arresting first crime novel to break into print this season.” Other novels include Godchild(Bantam/Dell) and Permanence (NPI). Translated into several languages including Japanese and the Dutch, Zandri’s novels have also been sought out by numerous major movie producers, including Heyday Productions and DreamWorks. Moonlight Falls is his fourth novel. He is the author of the blogs, Dangerous Dispatches and Embedded in Africa for RT ( Russia Today TV) which have been syndicated and translated in several different languages throughout the world. He also writes for other global publications, including Culture 11, Globalia, Globalspec and more. Zandri’s nonfiction has appeared in New York Newsday, Hudson Valley Magazine, Game and Fish Magazine and others, while his essays and short fiction have been featured in many journals including Fugue, Maryland Review and Orange Coast Magazine. He holds an M.F.A. in Writing from Vermont College and is a 2010 International Thrillerl. Writer’s Awards panel judge. Zandri currently divides his time between New York and Europe. He is the drummer for the Albany-based punk band to Blisterz. You can visit his website at www.vincentzandri.com or his blog atwww.vincentzandri.blogspot.com.