What Child is This?: John Jordan Mysteries

By Michael Lister

Tiana Capri, a young pre-teen girl from a good family goes missing on Christmas Eve. She vanishes without a trace from her locked house while her mom and brother sleep nearby, leaving no clues and little hope of finding her alive. Can John Jordan find her before it's too late? For the first time in his career, he enlists the help of his daughter, Johanna Jordan, who is a friend of Tiana's and who might just hold the key to discovering what happened to Tiana and the sinister forces behind her disappearance. Can the two Jordans save Christmas for Tiana and her family or will tragedy strike their own family as they try to? 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pulpwood Press
• Release date: Dec 25, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201326760

Michael Lister

New York Times bestselling and award-winning novelist, Michael Lister, is a native Floridian best known for his literary suspense thrillers DOUBLE EXPOSURE, BURNT OFFERINGS, and SEPARATION ANXIETY, as well as his two ongoing mystery series, the prison chaplain John Jordan "Blood" series (BLOOD SACRIFICE) and the hard-boiled, 1940s noir Jimmy "Soldier" Riley Series (THE BIG HELLO). The Florida Book Review says that "Vintage Michael Lister is poetic prose, exquisitely set scenes, characters who are damaged and faulty" and Michael Koryta says, “If you like crime writing with depth, suspense, and sterling prose, you should be reading Michael Lister," while Publisher's Weekly adds, “Lister’s hard-edged prose ranks with the best of contemporary noir fiction.” Michael grew up in North Florida near the Gulf of Mexico and the Apalachicola River in a small town world famous for tupelo honey.

Book preview

ONE

Christmas Eve is one of my favorite nights of the year. It’s tied with Halloween and Anna and the kids’ birthdays and maybe a few other magic nights that come around once every lap around the sun.

Even as a kid, I always enjoyed the Christmas season and Christmas Eve more than Christmas Day, which has always seemed to me an anticlimactic ending to an enchanting time of year.

This year, like every year, we celebrate Christmas Eve at Dad and Verna’s with chili, gifts, and games. Anna, Johanna, Taylor, and Nash are joined by my brother Jake, his date Michelle Stokes, my best friend Merrill, Merrill’s wife Zaire and mom, Mama Monroe.

It’s the first time in several years that Reggie Summers and her family haven’t joined us, and everything is tinged with a touch of sadness—even all these months later.

The warmth of Dad and Verna’s home with its hissing and crackling fire is an extreme contrast from the windy, wet, cold outside. It’s not only the coldest night of the year, the coldest December night on record, but we’re experiencing our version of a winter storm.

It’s a big part of why we’re lingering instead of leaving, hovering around the door with our coats on saying our goodbyes.

Jake, who has had much more to drink than he usually does, is being far more effusive and affectionate than he usually is.

Merry Christmas, man, he says as he hugs me for the third time. I love you, bro.

I love you too, I say. Looking over his shoulder at Amy, I mouth, You’re driving, right?

Her eyebrows shoot up and her brow furrows as she gives me an oh yeah expression and nods vigorously.

I don’t know much about her, but I really like what I’ve seen so far. Jake, who’s rarely in a relationship, more often than not picks the worst possible partners when he is. This time seems to be different—something that may very well be nothing short of a Christmas miracle.

We gonna head out before his drunk ass tries to hug me again, Merrill says. Thank y’all for havin’ us.

We really enjoyed it, Zaire says.

Mama Monroe adds, Always have such a nice time. Look forward to it all year long. I surely do.

Jake lets go of me and turns his attention to Merrill. It’s . . . Christmas you . . . bah humbug bastard. Get in here.

He attempts to hug all three of them, which is awkward and uncomfortable but Mama Monroe and Zaire go along with it.

TWO

The car is warm and dark, filled with the echoes of our breathing and the soft sounds of classic Christmas Carols coming from the radio.

The car is warm but not hot.

I had gone out and cranked it and jacked up the heat about fifteen minutes before we left so it could warm-up, but by the time all four doors were opened and all five of us piled in, much of the furnace-like heat had spilled out, escaping into the ether.

We are bundled up beneath our seatbelts in a way that is truly rare in North Florida, and our layers and jackets, scarfs and gloves make us feel awkward and uncomfortable and limit our mobility and flexibility.

That was so nice, Anna says.

I nod. Always is. It’s my favorite night of the year.

It is right now, she says, but I remember you sayin’ the same thing about Halloween when we were out trick-or-treating on Second Street that night.

I smile. She’s right. It’s a two-way tie with a bit of bias toward whichever is the current night.

We’re so fortunate to have the family and friends we do, Anna says.

Yes, we are, I say, reaching over and taking her hand.

Our immediate family riding in this warm car on this cold Christmas Eve consists of Johanna, my daughter with my ex-wife Susan, Taylor, Anna’s daughter with her ex-husband Chris, and Nash, a soon-to-be sixteen-year-old who we took in when his mother was killed in a case I was working. All three of them are mine and Anna’s children just as surely as if we had them together.

Johanna is our only child that we don’t have full-time, and every time we have to say goodbye it breaks my heart all over again, but, perhaps sensing what a great dynamic we have, Susan has let her spend increasingly more time with us.

I’m worried about Jake, she says. I’ve wanted him to have someone for so long, but . . . I’m not sure Michelle is good for him.

I’ll check on them in a little while.

Daddy . . . Taylor says from the backseat, her disembodied voice small and sweet in the darkness. She’s only recently started calling me daddy and I love it. Is it too cold for Santa to come tonight?

Absolutely not, I say. He lives at the North Pole. It’s a lot, lot colder there than this.

But what if my super slime factory and unicorn baking set freeze?

They won’t, I say. Santa knows how to keep that from happening.

Oh, good. That’s a relief.

We all laugh.

Don’t laugh at me, she says.