Night of the Nobility Cult

Inspired by the classic 1960s TV series, the Wild, Wild West, Night of the Nobility Cult: A Wild, Wild Western is a faithful and reverent send-up, yet creatively a completely original story pilot with fresh characters set in an updated time period, populated by actual persons and events in history: the year’s 1886, during America’s Reconstruction Era, under President Grover Cleveland. With the violent labor unrest of the notorious Haymarket Affair in Chicago, Illinois as the backdrop, a labor-friendly Congressman is murdered by a strange, skull-faced assassin. The only lead to the killer is an invitation to an initiation ceremony for a sinister secret society called the Order of the Skulls, also known as the Brotherhood of Death.  United States Secret Service agent, Ernest Jordan, recruits to the service a Pinkerton detective, James T. Justice, to investigate the initiation site based at the Melrose Castle in Virginia.  Change-through-Chaos is the society’s stated threat to the nation.  After escaping incineration in a crematory, the new partnership team of Justice and Jordan are sent on a cross-country trek to witness three demonstrations of the society’s power to create conflict and chaos in a bid to shadow the government, not by overt takeover, but through outright extortion, manipulation, domination, and control: first to a lighthouse to witness an artificially triggered tidal wave in Texas; next to an artificially triggered earthquake in South Carolina; and, finally, to an undisclosed demonstration in New York City.  On their way, the agents encounter President Cleveland, and his lovely young wife, Frances Clara Folsom; the Red-Shirt Riders of South Carolina; a beautiful young suffragist named Kitty; and an assortment of other mysterious and menacing characters.  Their expedition ends with a climactic confrontation at the dedication ceremony for the Statue of Liberty!  For this new government agent duo—as well as for the reader—it’s a spectacular, unforgettable, and completely surprising first mission worthy of its original inspiration.