Blogtour: Buried Secrets by John Petrie

Please welcome John Petrie with 

Buried Secrets

Timothy and Wyatt Mysteries #1

Hi, I'm John Petrie.

I love a good mystery. Who did it? And why? But, damn, they’re really hard to figure out how to write. I wrote a lot of Buried Secrets sitting next to a corkboard with a lot of index cards on it. 

And I still managed to screw up names and dates without even realizing it…

But, to me, it was as much a love letter as it was a love story. When I was young (many moons ago) I read Nancy Drew over and over. I didn’t really get into the Hardy Boys until after the TV show. You remember Pamela Sue Martin, Parker Stevenson, and Shaun Cassidy, right? And now, if you’d like to do your own detective work, you can figure out how old I am. Very, very old.

But it was more than Nancy, Frank, and Joe. I was always a big fan of Ned Nickerson, Nancy’s boyfriend. Poor long suffering Ned, who always did whatever Nancy asked, but never asked too many questions. I’d wondered how Ned felt about being the sidekick. The muscle. 

But it was more than Nancy, Frank, Joe, and Ned. It was also about the fact that I wanted Frank and Ned, who at one point were almost-sort-of-kind-of rivals for Nancy’s affection, not to be. I wanted them to hook-up. 

I’m not sure if anyone else is my age. (Anyone? You? No? Okay.) But, if you are, you remember that back in the day LGBTQ people weren’t allowed to be heroes. We could be brave, especially if you were a gay man, because you were shown living with (and by the end of the book/movie/mini-series, dying from) AIDS, but you couldn’t be a tough guy. You couldn’t throw or take a punch. 

There’s a little bit of wish fulfillment with Buried Secrets. I’d like to be Timothy. More accurately, I’d like to have been Timothy when I was seventeen. Too smart, too sure, too self-aware, but a good guy. I’d like to have been able to physically take care of myself the way that Timothy can. And I’d like to be as brave as he is. I’d like to be as kind as Wyatt. I’d like to be as strong as he is.

Maybe, just maybe, someone will read the book and think: Yeah. I can take care of myself the way that he does. Maybe, someone won’t worry that being LGBTQ doesn’t mean you can’t be as smart as Nancy Drew, as tough as Frank and Joe Hardy, or as loving and loyal as Ned. 

Maybe, a gay, teen detective isn’t far-fetched, after all.

Blurb:

The son of an alcoholic mother, Wyatt Courtland skips school to work construction to help the family survive. When he finds a lockbox containing a series of articles about Bobby LaFleur, a student who went missing four years ago, he enlists the help of sheriff’s son Timothy Mitchell to learn what happened to Bobby.

Timothy wants to go into law enforcement, even if it’s against his father’s wishes. He figures solving this case will convince his dad he can handle police work, but as he digs deeper, he uncovers a string of missing boys—and the truth about Wyatt’s desire to find out what truly happened to Bobby. As the two grow closer, they realize the mystery is far more sinister than they imagined—and it’s a secret someone is willing to kill to protect.

Get the book: 

About the author:


John R. Petrie grew up in Boston and now lives in the Bronx, NY. Almost his entire working career has been spent around books, from his first job in the town library to more than twenty years bookselling in one of the biggest bookstores in the US. He’s also worked for the Housing Works thrift stores in NYC, Valiant Entertainment Comics, and is now a bookstore manager, which gives him too much access to books and not enough time to read them.

He’s had stories published in True Romance magazine, had a play he wrote produced at his college, acted, danced, and was nominated for a Barrymore award playing Belize in Angels in America.

He stays up too late, eats too much junk food, and has been reading Wonder Woman comics for over forty years.

He is very, very happy to be published by Harmony Ink Press. He hopes to write stories which make people smile.

Find him on Twitter.

Promotional post. Materials provided by the author.