News

By Steve Pike

    In the fifth installment of his “Shagball and Tangles” series of adventure novels, Lantana author A.C. Brooks pulls out all the stops — at least for now. Rigged finds the not-so-dynamic duo of TV fishing show host Shagball and his pint-sized partner Tangles entangled (pardon the pun) with a secret U.S. government spy agency, ISIS terrorists, a former U.S. president and a tricked-out fishing boat that would make Clive Cussler proud.
    Rigged is Brooks’ most ambitious, politically incorrect and entertaining book to date, as he puts our heroes (and new and old readers) deeper into the service of the Department of International Criminal Knowledge (DICK), an agency softly introduced in Weedline, the third book in the series.
    Self-published like its predecessors, Rigged expands Shagball and Tangles’ world of the absurd and inane from South Florida and the Caribbean to deep into the heart of Texas and the Mexican border.
    “There is no over the top in fiction,” Brooks said. “If you’re buying into it, you’re buying into it.”
    At the same time Shagball and Tangles are expanding their world, Brooks is maturing as an author. Rigged flows more freely than his previous novels and ends with a twist that few readers will see coming.
    “I can only go by what others tell me, and most people think that my writing has gotten better each book, which I would hope,” Brooks said. “But I certainly haven’t changed my style. For me the most important thing is to make somebody turn the page, entertain them, give them some laughs and get them sucked into a story. I don’t give it too much thought other than that. I might be turning off some readers with some of the political background, but it’s unavoidable in the story.  You can take some shots and have some fun doing it.”
    As with each of the books in the series, Rigged is available at The Old Key Lime House in Lantana and on amazon.com. Brooks will make signing appearances at the Old Key Lime House from 4 to 7 p.m. on Feb. 5 and March 7.
    At each of those signings — and in between — fans will no doubt ask Brooks about his next book.
    “I don’t know yet,” Brooks says, smiling in a booth at the Old Key Lime House. “I sort of have an idea. But Shagball and Tangles don’t think too far ahead, either.”