Treadmill by Warren Adler
We are delighted to welcome novelist Warren Adler back to Omnimystery News today.
Warren is one very busy author! Currently in development for him is the Hollywood sequel to The War of the Roses — The War of the Roses: The Children, along with other projects including Capitol Crimes, a television series based on his Fiona Fitzgerald mystery novels as well as a feature film based on his WWII thriller co-written with James Humes, Target Churchill, in association with Myles Nestel and Lisa Wilson of The Solution Entertainment Group.
And he still has time to write! His new novel is Treadmill (Stonehouse Productions; September 2014 trade paperback and e-book formats), and we are pleased to introduce to you it with an excerpt from the first chapter.
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SEEN PARRISH?" JACK COOPER ASKED Blake, Head Trainer at the Bethesda Health Club. Blake was neat as a pin, dressed in sky blue spandex that fit his toned body like a glove. Cooper had speculated that it was a management decision to make the uniform so tight, designed to keep Blake's clients self-conscious and aware of what they needed to work on.
Cooper and Parrish had done their treadmill routine and weight sets next to each other for five months before Parrish even acknowledged Cooper's presence. Before that, there was not a smile, nor a hint of recognition, even though they began and ended their routines at precisely the same time. They followed each other on the treadmill and weight machines, obeying Blake's instructions to the letter. At all times Parrish had been silent, avoiding eye contact, totally focused on himself.
Parrish and Cooper did talk separately to Blake, who kept a watchful eye on their workouts, occasionally correcting their mistakes. Cooper, who resented Blake's arrogant surety, nevertheless considered him a competent trainer.
In an earlier incarnation, Cooper might have attributed Parrish's lack of acknowledgment to rudeness or snobbery. Maybe the man was also, like himself, one of the walking wounded, too pissed off to be polite, or simply indifferent to the blandishments of human contact.
As time went on, Cooper made an effort to put all speculation about Parrish out of his mind, thinking of him as an inanimate object, like the exercise machines. Still, Parrish's daily presence made it impossible to completely eliminate the man out of Cooper's mind or his field of vision."
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Photo provided courtesy of
Warren Adler
Warren Adler is an author, playwright, poet, and essayist. With over 40 years of an insider's view of the exclusive domain of the nation's political elite, Adler writes with a unique insight and command rendering him an invaluable voice in the evolving American experience, and a trademark in American literature.
For more information about the author, please visit his website at WarrenAdler.com and his author page on Goodreads, or find him on Facebook and Twitter.
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Treadmill
Warren Adler
A Novel
Jack Cooper is an unhappy man; mind, body, and spirit. In the blink of an eye, he lost his job to the bad economy, his mother to a fatal illness, and his wife to her secret lover. Beaten, broken, and crippled by tragedy, he withdraws into total isolation, maintaining the simplest of routines in order to block out his pain. Cooper's day begins with a strenuous workout at the Bethesda Health Club — his personal oasis where his mind and body are free — and ends inside his bare apartment, where Cooper escapes into his library of novels until he finally loses himself in sleep. Nothing more, nothing less. That is, until he meets the enigmatic Mike Parrish.
Stolen from the hospital as a newborn, and passed around from household to household, Parrish has no official identification. To the government and the world at large, he does not exist. He is an anonymous drifter, but also the first person who breaks through Cooper's emotional confinement. Cooper finds solace in his friendship with Parrish, a man who understands his plight and is sympathetic to his pain.
But then Parrish suddenly disappears, leaving Cooper to search for a virtually invisible man. As he looks for clues as intangible as ghosts, and chases leads as fleeting as shadows, his search leads him back to the one place he called his refuge: the Bethesda Health Club.
How much can be taken from a man before he has nothing to lose?
