Bricked: A Pat Riordan Story

By J. Michael McGee

Jobless and divorced, Pat Riordan takes a little-sought-after teaching job at the District's school for the hard-to-handle, Wolfcreek.  His sense of loss makes him a good fit for the boys of the school who call their banishment from the mainstream "bricked."

 

Doug Donovan, the school´s principal, agrees with Riordan that gentle, but firm teaching strategies are the best way for their kids to learn. But ego-driven administrators, who want the school location for more promising students, feel otherwise and start a campaign to discredit the school staff and curriculum.

 

As the school year unwinds, Riordan finds his way into the personal life of one of his students, Bobby, and gets thrust into the role of rescuer when Bobby's mother is abused by her live-in boyfriend.

 

Will Riordan be able to put aside his own sense of loss to inspire his students to rise above theirs? Can Wolfcreek prove that these young adults are worth investing in, despite troubled behaviors, in order to save the school from closure? Bricked follows Riordan, the students and staff in what might be the school's final year.  

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sugar Grove Press
• Release date: Mar 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9781736844793

J. Michael McGee

I grew up across the street from a house where a young girl was murdered. That mystery, still unsolved to this day, drove me to work in the criminal justice system, first as a court investigator and later as a prison counselor. In between those jobs, I worked as a college speech instructor, a freelance writer, a newspaper reporter and a high school teacher. I took time-out to travel overseas, hike the Grand Canyon several times and return to school to earn three master degrees. The young girl's death decades ago also prompted me to become a "paperback writer" of mysteries. As an investigator for 15 years, I heard first-hand stories from men who committed crimes. Later, as a mental health therapist at a prison, I developed a keen ear for hard and realistic dialogue. ​I wrote my first book Bricked after teaching in a school for at-risk students. Pat Riordan, the protagonist in my trilogy, was introduced in this novel. While Bricked is fictional, the episodes and mannerisms of the characters personify life inside a school for disenfranchised youth. In the follow-up novels, The Slip Swing and The Cues, Riordan, the teacher, has also taken on the role of an amateur shamus. The Slip Swing has a paranormal bent. The third book, The Cues, finds Riordan uncovering facts surrounding an unsolved murder and the whereabouts of local missing women. Each book is driven by hard dialogue, reflecting my years working in the criminal justice system and my experiences as a teacher. ​My intent was to provide a fresh twist for the reader of mysteries and for the detective in all of us.Here is a link to my webpage to learn more about the Pat Riordan trilogy: https://www.jmichaelmcgee.com/