The Puppeteer

About the Book

In wartime 1943 small towns along the North Carolina Coastal Plain were “invaded” by many thousands of Marines from Camp Lejeune and soldiers from Ft. Bragg. Cheap motels, cheaper booze, easy sex and young men with uncertain futures disrupted the life of rural Lenoir County. However, civilians and soldiers “got along.” That is, until a soldier hired a Marine to murder the soldier’s beautiful wife, and in a tragic case of mistaken identity the Marine murdered his co-conspirator’s teenage daughter. Then the situation changed. Set against the backdrop of the wartime small-town South, The Puppeteer is a classic tale of murder for hire, mistaken identity, cunning betrayal and exacting revenge, during a period that came to be known as The Fifteen Days in the Summer of 1943.

About the Author

The author, an attorney and optometrist, resides outside Atlanta with his wife Evelyn, an attorney, their four talented children having gone on to careers in Optometry, real estate and teaching. In May 1961 the author received an undergraduate degree in Physics-Mathematics from Berry College, and in July of that year enlisted in the U. S. Army. He served two tours of duty in South Korea, the last with U. S. Army Intelligence as a Korean linguist and prisoner interrogator. In 1972 Dr. Provost was awarded the degree of Doctor of Optometry from the University of Houston, and in 1980 earned a Juris Doctor degree from Nova Southeastern University College of Law. Dr. Provost is the author of the best-selling memoir, Reflections in an Orphan’s Eye, The Puppeteer, a mystery novel of the wartime South, and thirteen other mystery novels.