{"id":37302,"date":"2025-01-06T08:05:00","date_gmt":"2025-01-06T13:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/?p=37302"},"modified":"2024-12-07T22:33:25","modified_gmt":"2024-12-08T03:33:25","slug":"the-drummer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/?p=37302","title":{"rendered":"THE DRUMMER by Anthony Neil Smith \/ Z-View"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/48RCddL\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/stallonezone.com\/zone\/2025\/z010625zview_thedrummer.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"715\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/48RCddL\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">THE DRUMMER<\/a> by Anthony Neil Smith<\/p>\n<p>First sentence&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The bleach-blonde fancy boy stood in the doorway of this small bar at the edge of the French Quarter hoping to be recognized, but those days were long gone.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The Overview:\u00a0 Beware of Spoilers\u2026<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Fourteen years ago Cal Christopher disappeared.\u00a0 Cal was the drummer of Savage Nights. The popular heavy metal band wasn&#8217;t top tier.\u00a0 It was just below.\u00a0 But outside the group&#8217;s inner circle, no one knew the in- fighting. Or that the band was facing bankruptcy.\u00a0 Cal saw the writing on the wall.\u00a0 He moved enough of his assets to live comfortably for life, burned down his mansion and vanished.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Cal moved to New Orleans.\u00a0 He became Merle Johnson.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Merle is happy.\u00a0 New Orleans is home.\u00a0 All is good.\u00a0 Then one day Merle is confronted by Todd Delacroix, the formed lead singer of Savage Nights.\u00a0 Todd threatens to expose Cal if he doesn&#8217;t out himself.\u00a0 Delacroix wants the group back together for a reunion tour.\u00a0 A last chance to cash in on the group&#8217;s fame.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Merle has many reasons not to come back as Cal.\u00a0 The IRS and the fact that he burned down his mansion are two.\u00a0 Merle says he&#8217;ll consider and agrees to meet Delacroix later.\u00a0 When Merle shows up at Delacroix&#8217;s hotel room he finds him unconscious, surrounded by empty booze bottles.\u00a0 A suicide note outing Merle as Cal rests beside Delacroix.\u00a0 Merle panics and makes two bad decisions.\u00a0 One is taking the note&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Now the police, reporters, his former band mates and others are on Merle&#8217;s trail.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Rating:<\/strong><br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/stallonezone.com\/zone\/logo\/zview_b.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"100\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>THE DRUMMER by Anthony Neil Smith First sentence&#8230; The bleach-blonde fancy boy stood in the doorway of this small bar<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":912,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[52,74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-z-view"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/912"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37302"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37929,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37302\/revisions\/37929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}