Overview

The Devil’s Marque is a science fiction mystery about Calliope Dancer and what’s happening to all of Mr. Appleyard’s unsavory clients. His cash flow is taking a hit and he’s very unhappy about it. Then along comes a mysterious lawyer and a very old connection to China. It all happens over a summer, and the last 112 years, maybe more. Even Calliope’s special candy doesn’t help her much this time – or with her own guilt about her client either. Good and evil are just ambiguous concepts after all. Everything is something it isn’t. Even the first time we meet other beings.

Meet Calliope Dancer: confectiontionaire extraordinaire
with abilities to connive, control, and correct everything
she contracts for and more. Or she thought until a spider
and a lawyer catch her in their web, and her candy
helps not at all to get her beyond their wall. The police
are unamused and her client unsatisfied. Now what can she do?

What starts out as a favor for a friend soon turns into a very
strange and dangerous assignment from a client that Calliope
wishes she had never heard of. Good and evil weave a tangled
web that only a very old and crafty being seems to understand.
Maybe it is just a dream from too much sugar and chemistry.
After all, life can’t be that strange – can it?

Author

Mike Macartney is an aerospace engineer from Nevada.
He spent a career in the space business as an analysis
engineer, an engineering manager, an armored vehicle
business manager, and a consultant to NASA. He helped to
found an IT and a software company in Northern California.