Ruined by Murder Addicted to Love - a Mystery-Romance Novel

PREFACE

Ronald Joseph Kule

“No good book has ever been written that has in it symbols arrived at beforehand and stuck in. In The Old Man and the Sea, I tried to make a real old man, a real boy, a real sea and a real fish and real sharks. But if I made them good and true enough they would mean many things.” — Ernest Hemingway, 1954

Like all games, the game of love has winners and losers. Carlos Almarón yearns for true love but nearly drowns in its wake. Crushed by his lover’s dismissal, he almost breaks beyond fixing. His checkered past rears up like a rogue wave and leaves him awash in the flotsam of difficult memories brought on by nightmarish daydreams. Almarón's struggle to regain moral clarity and lost honor teaches him that love alone may not be what satisfies most. Having earned how his personal foibles caused his terrible situation, he vows to overcome his self-created obstacles and heartache, despite his weighty, emotional baggage, and win!

Carmela Ariana, Almarón’s lifelong platonic girlfriend, also suffers a gauntlet of sexual vicissitudes arguably more difficult than his, yet survives. Her residual memories unlock and force open floodgates of private desires that almost prevent her fulfillment of a lifelong dream she never knew she had inside of her.

But history is a mere context for Almarón and Ariana. When their friendship stands the test of time, tomorrow - that great unknown - brings unexpected changes and providential good luck.

Reading this adventurous novel, we discover that if true love demands our letting go of precious fixed ideas and the unwashed effects of our past bad behaviors, then Almarón and Ariana must find true love only after learning to trust each other long enough for Cupid's arrows to find them.

Every man and woman seeks the kind of romance these two hapless people crave; everyone faces the same omnipresent choice: either rise above the fray and win love against all odds or fail miserably in the delicious attempt. A winding road tempts Almarón and Ariana toward Cupid’s timeless embrace, taking them and readers by surprise time after time!

Ruined by Murder Addicted to Love

*****