Cry of the Heron

A Tony Lowell Mystery 

At the time of first publication in the early 1990s, such a character as Tony Lowell was unheard of in detective fiction. He was a war veteran but also a peacenik, a beer drinker but also known to smoke pot with his pals, a guitar player, follower of Zen, and muscle car driver but also an avid sailor, nature lover and an environmentalist, who, while ready to go where others feared to tread, refused to carry a weapon. As a result, although published by a mainstream publisher, Tony Lowell has remained an underground cult figure not widely known outside of Florida mystery circles.

After his first book Hour of the Manatee won the St. Martin’s Press/Private Eye Writers of America Best First Detective Novel competition in 1992, Ayres wrote three more books for this series. Then, with an offer on the table for a fifth episode, decided to shelve the entire project because it was clear that Tony Lowell’s time had not yet come. Ayres spent much of the following decade researching a literary thriller about the Shakespeare authorship (The Shakespeare Chronicles), a YA crossover novel about his adventures in the animation television business (Toon Man) (both scheduled for publication this spring), and then spent three years teaching and living in China. Now, close on the heels of publication of his China memoir A Billion to One: An American Insider in the New China, Ayres is reviving and renewing the Tony Lowell Mysteries with a brand new eco-thriller, Cry of the Heron.

For an excerpt from Cry of the Heron click here.

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