The Circular Saw

(Note: The Rabbit Skinners, my second novel, concerns Herculean FBI agent James Strait, whose life is devastated by a rare disease. His promising career suddenly ended, he returns to his rural hometown in northern Arizona and resigns himself to a life of disability, until a little girl asks him to use his skills to find her missing friend.  This passage, which occurs as Strait returns to his hometown on an Amtrack train, describes how it feels to have a Meniere’s Disease attack. I drew upon my own experiences with Meniere’s to write it.)

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The Amtrak trip to Pine River took two days. Strait had reserved a room, and the FBI paid a month’s rental for it, at a hotel called The Blue Rabbit, an historic downtown fixture that had existed long before Strait had left town a dozen years before. The Blue Rabbit, a couple of…