About Richard F. McGonegal
Richard F. McGonegal and his wife Kristie live in Jefferson City, MO, where their two adult daughters Heather and Jane also reside.
He retired in 2017 after a 41-year journalism career at the Jefferson City News Tribune. Twenty-four of his short stories have been published in magazines, including Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.
Ghoul Duty is his second novel in his Sheriff Francis Hood series.
Ghoul Duty
(Sheriff Francis Hood Book 2)
A flooded cemetery, a corpse that was never buried, and a recently released convict who has every reason to hate Sheriff Hood...
After a menacing flood disinters corpses and coffins from a small-town parish cemetery along the Missouri river, Sheriff Francis Hood and his chief deputy take on the task of Ghoul Duty: collecting the misplaced remains and seeing them returned to the cemetery. But their muddy evening patrol takes a sinister turn when they haul in a body that hasn't been buried.
As Hood sets out to determine who the man is and how he died, his already complicated personal life is muddled further when he starts receiving anonymous phone messages. Hood suspects they may be related to the recent release of an ex-convict, whose father was killed by Hood in a shootout. He must learn the truth, and soon, before the threats bring the past back to haunt him, his family, and the town.
Unravel the secrets troubling Sheriff Francis Hood — Read Ghoul Duty!
Praise for Ghoul Duty
“McGonegal's Sheriff Francis Hood belongs right up there with Longmire and Robicheaux. Ghoul Duty swept me away from the very first page.” ~ M. A. Monnin, Author of Death in The Aegean
“An engaging mystery that invites the reader to root for the sheriff as he struggles with recovery from alcoholism and emotional conundrums, tracks multiple crimes, and reaches realistic solutions. (No actual ghouls.)” ~ Charley Pearson, Award-winning author of thrillers and humor
“Ghoul Duty is that rare mystery that uses a cast of beautifully rendered characters and a natural storyteller’s fine hand to showcase some of life’s most compelling ironies—how the placid waters of ordinary life often conceal treacherous currents beneath the surface, how small mistakes can produce awful catastrophes while catastrophic mistakes sometimes yield the small graces that make life so rich, and how one person’s detour into desperate territory can serve as another person’s bridge to salvation.” ~ Roger Johns, Award-winning author of the Wallace Hartman Mysteries