Kindle Edition Amazon Goodreads Library Thing Category:  Mystery/Suspense Publisher: Speaking Volumes ISBN-10:  1645400891 Type: Fiction Pages: 297 Copyright: January 22, 2020 ISBN-13: 9781645400899 Price: $4.99 (eBook) When a young African American graduate student from Boston is found murdered in rural South Florida, P.I. Tony Lowell takes it personally. The victim had been the grandson of two of his oldest friends.  When Timothy Cross, a recent young college graduate and environmental activist working for the government, is found murdered in an alligator pond, Florida private eye Tony Lowell and his friend, police detective Lena Bedrosian, search for a cold-blooded killer.   Lowell doesn't hesitate to join the fray, for the victim was the nephew of Ernie Larson, one of Lowell's oldest friends.   As Lowell begins investigating, his array of suspects includes a baseball fanatic, a single mother, and her dangerously violent boyfriend. Soon he finds himself pitted against powerful industry types, as well as black advocacy groups concerned about jobs and backwoods racists who resent meddlers. The stakes are raised even further, however, when he discovers that the very safety of Florida's diminishing water supply is at stake. Lowell is determined to find the killer, but he's got to save his own skin while he's at it. Excerpt Chapter One Santa Fe, Northern New Mexico: The man was short, stocky, and muscular. He wore a cutoff T-Shirt with the midriff ripped out to display his once rippling abdominals, unmindful of the layer of flab that now over his belt. His black eyes were fierce and ruthless but now glowed with celebratory joy, because today was his lucky day. He could hardly believe his good fortune. Grinning widely, he flicked his tongue as he watched his stupid, stupid wife drive right past him, oblivious, in broad daylight, where he was just pulling out of the parking lot of Furr's Market. He'd been looking for her for months. Even his supposed friend Pedro claimed not to know where she'd gone. FuckPedro. Fuck friends like that shithead. Now here she was, serving herself up to him on a silver platter, driving around as though without a care in the world! With a triumphant laugh, he slashed his way into traffic several cars behind her, congratulating himself, cursing her out in Spanish Puta! He thought. Estupida! To celebrate his mood he put on his all time favorite CD, Santana's Supernatural, to hear "Smooth" again. He usually didn't listen to Anglo music, and he hadn't been around back then, but this Rob Thomas dude was Ok by him. The woman had eyes only for the highway ahead, and never even looked back. If she had, she would surely have turned aside, turned away, tried to escape, at least done something. Instead, she led him straight to the only place she knew that she thought was safe. Where she'd been hiding all these months, until she just couldn't stand it any more, and had to get out, see some familiar surroundings, see her family that she missed, do something other than just sit, and wait, and be afraid. “Estupida," he crowed a thousand times, during the two hour drive as he followed her south, down the Turquoise Trail, past the Spanish cow town of Cerillos, through the biker-artist colony of Madrid, onward south, into the Sandia Mountains east of Albuquerque, where, exhausted, she finally pulled into a motel at Cedar Crest. "Estupida," he muttered yet again, a hundred yards behind her the whole time. Had she heard him, she would have had no choice but to agree. He'd been thinking, kept thinking about her, dreaming of this moment, planning for it for months. He'd finally come to realize that there was only one way to keep her, to bond her to him like a proper wife should be bonded. He had to give her a baby. She wanted one anyway, it stood to reason, what decent Latina woman would not? It was their one and only purpose in life, to bear children for their hombres. And he was her hombre. Always was, always would be. It wasthe way it always was, the way it had to be. Anybody who disagreed, would have to answer to him. After that, they'd answer to God. Or El Diablo, or whoever was out there where he sure ashell would send them, if they got in his face.. He caught up to her at the motel, waiting until she had turned her lock and started to open the door. Then he simply stepped up behind her and pushed her into the room, quickly slipping in behind her. She didn't have to look to know, and was terrified at once. He laughed as she screamed into the heedless night wind that came howling down out of the surrounding mountains.

Booklist 11/95 (Eye of the Gator)
“Retired photographer, beach bum, and sometime sleuth Tony Lowell is a roguish forty-something hippie whose only nod to the establishment is his feisty friendship with police detective Lena Bedrosian. Lowell's latest adventure begins when old friend Ernie Larson asks him to investigate the disappearance of Ernie's nephew, Timothy Cross a young black man who came to Florida to work as an environmental engineer. It doesn't take long for Lowell to find out that Tim's been murdered, but why is another matter. Following a complex and tricky trail of clues leads Lowell through the minefields of racial prejudice, battered women, illicit affairs, industrial cover-ups, graft, and corruption. Veteran writer Ayres knows his stuff--his characters are offbeat and intriguing, his plot is realistically menacing, he offers a nice balance of humor and suspense, and Tony Lowell is a wacky but likeable guy who is sort of Travis McGee, Don Quixote, and Willie Nelson rolled into one.” --Emily Melton
Booklist (Eye of the Gator)


A Mystery with a Conscience:
A Mystery with a Conscience:
“After the publication of his debut novel Hour of the Manatee, E. C. Ayres was praised for his sharp and original style. Now in his sophomore effort, the St. Petersburg (now Seattle) resident has done it again. He has brilliantly and thoughtfully interwoven a suspenseful talke with some actual, pressing Florida environmental issues. Eye of the Gator is a must read for anyone looking for a brainy mystery.

The opening pages of Eye of the Gator begin rather slowly. We again meet photographer and part-time P.I. Tony Lowell, first introduced in Hour of the Manatee. Now almost broke, Lowell is smarting from the sudden departure of his daughter, with whom he recently was reunited. Then he learns that Timothy Cross, the nephew of Ernie Larson, one of Lowell’s oldest pals, has been murdered. Lowell agrees to help his friendly rival, Detective Lena Bedrosian, find Cross’s killer.

Cross was a recent college graduate and an environmental activist working for the government, so Lowell first investigates the under-the-table dealings of the local fertilizer plant, Florida Fertilizers. There he finds workers willing to risk contamination of the state aquifer to save their jobs. (Unfortunately this is often a real-life occurrence, as Ayres illustrates with a quote from the St. Petersburg Times on the contamination of the Florida aquifer).

Lowell’s list of suspects doesn’t include just fertilizer thugs. He also finds himself pitted against racist hippie-haters and a rather dangerous and violent boyfriend with Special Forces training. In fact, as in most good mystery novels, everyone seems to deserve the shaft—from the racist fertilizer industry do-boy, to the jealousy-filled black advocacy group leader.

But as the novel draws to an end, Ayres provides enough information so that we’re able to narrow down the list. In a refreshing change from the casually thrown-together mystery, all of P.I. Tony Lowell’s pieces fit.
Lowell fits too. One of the most pleasing things about Ayres’ hero is his lack of testosterone-driven emotion (although there is the mandatory, gratuitous sex scene, which isn’t all that graphic).

The level-headed Lowell doesn’t even carry a gun. In an entertainment industry usually driven by murder and mayhem, Eye of the Gator reserves most of its killing for the climax. Of course, Lowell is trained in special defense tactics, so don’t try this at home.”--Carlos Senior
The St. Petersburg Times