The Puppeteer

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.