Devil's Den

It's the early 1920s. Someone is killing old Civil War vets. Whatever for? Troubled young G-Man Seth Armitage is assigned by the Bureau to find the killer. As he investigates this strange crime, the very forces that put him on the case seem to be obstructing it, and before he knows it he's running from the KKK, hounded by the ambitious young J. Edgar Hoover and entangled with a beautiful blond who may be much less innocent than she appears. A lauded, fast-moving and compelling historical thriller featuring meticulously researched real-life characters, Devil's Den brings to life that fascinating and emotionally rich period between WWI and WWII in America.

The 1923 murder of a Civil War veteran leaves a trail of conspiracy, cover-up and corruption stretching from the Battle of Gettysburg to the halls of the Harding-era Congress and the fledgling Bureau of Investigation (precursor to the FBI). Someone is killing elderly Civil War veterans and BI agent Seth Armitage must discover what links the victims in order to find the killer, unaware that the investigation is being manipulated by the Bureau's corrupt director Harry M. Daugherty(real-life Attorney General in the tainted Harding Administration) and a shadowy member of the Senate. Providing a Machiavellian counterweight to the plot is the BI's ambitious assistant director J. Edgar Hoover. The case draws Virginia-born Armitage, haunted by his memories of World War I France, to the site of the bloody battlefield where his grandfathers fought for the Confederacy. Ashby's interweaving of the two events, and his portrayal of the Civil War as a lingering tragedy for both sides of the conflict, nicely ups the emotional stakes. The beautiful daughter of a deceased Union soldier plays a pivotal role; so do young Charles "Slim" Lindbergh, the resurging Ku Klux Klan and BI colleague Gaston Means (a convicted felon in real life). Real people, real events and the still-charged reverberations of the Civil War provide a provocative framework for a 1920s-era mystery neatly told with meticulous historical detail and enjoyable twists.

Timothy Ashby worked in Washington, D.C. as a counter-terrorism consultant to the U.S. State Department, and a senior official at the U.S. Commerce Department. He held two Top Secret security clearances and worked with a number of colorful characters, including members of the U.S. military's Joint Special Operations Command. Before and after his career in Washington, Ashby led a peripatetic life. Born in the USA, he spent his teenage years in Grenada, where he learned to surf, sail and dive, and where his lifelong passion for history and archaeology was inspired. It was also in Grenada that he became passionate about writing, having the good fortune to be mentored by authors Martin Woodhouse and Dudley Pope. Mr. Pope named one of the characters in his Lord Ramage series "Captain Ashby," in honor of the teenage Tim Ashby. After moving to in Spain and then the UK, Ashby returned to Grenada in his early 20s. There he served as a director of various businesses until the Communist Revolution of 1979. Ashby received his PhD in International Relations from the University of Southern California. In the 1990s, he lived in the UK, earning an MBA degree at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, and working in Central and Eastern Europe on a variety of privatization and economic development projects. He also has a law degree, and is a licensed attorney in Florida and Washington, D.C. He has been a successful entrepreneur, serving as CEO of several global companies that he founded. He is the author of Time Fall, Devil's Den, Missed Opportunities, The Bear in the Back Yard, numerous articles, and the prize-winning ghost story, "Warrior's Return."