Divorced and living in a converted garage, John Peoples thinks his difficulties are over when he wins half of a $40 million lottery jackpot. But his boss, Ed White, bought the winning ticket for the two of them, and only Ed’s name is on the ticket. When White makes clear his intention to cut John out of the winnings and then disappears with the entire jackpot, John embarks on an effort to find White and right the wrong.

During his quest, John suffers a debilitating spine injury and struggles to heal physically and emotionally. Yet he continues pursuing White from Los Angeles to Paris to Marseille. Along the way, he tries navigating the legal system, meets a woman he believes he can only dream about, and eventually engages the help of organized crime. Ultimately, he is faced with the question of how far he is willing to go to retrieve and protect what is his.

John B. Peoples is more than the study of a character out to correct an injustice. It takes us on a powerful journey while examining loss, personal growth, and the everyday challenges of life in America today.

Mr. Cowan has written a sharp, intelligent, thoroughly compelling page-turner that will haunt you long after you put it down — if you’re able to put it down.”
—Barry Sandler, Screenwriter (Crimes of Passion, Making Love and Agatha Christie’s The Mirror Crack’d)

“A curious soup of you-done-me-wrong cured by noirish coloring outside legal lines. A rousing read.”
—Matthew Rose, Trouble Magazine

“Michael has written an engaging and entertaining story that moves briskly and incorporates thought-provoking circumstances. Be warned – the book may lead you to think twice before buying a lottery ticket.”
—Paul Bergman, Professor of Law Emeritus, UCLA Law School. Paul is the Co-Author of Real to Reel: Truth and Trickery in Courtroom Movies” and the author or co-author of more than a dozen books focused on civil and criminal law.

“Michael Cowan’s John B. Peoples is a tense thriller about one man’s quest to even the score. John Peoples is equal parts unforgiving and relentless, and you’ll want to sign up for this gritty ride.”
— Mark Stevens, author of No Lie Lasts Forever

JOHN B. PEOPLES
Literary Legal Thriller
BY MICHAEL COWAN

Excerpt

AFTER MY ACCIDENT, I dreamed about eyes embedded in a head. No ears, no nose, no lips. Just a head. With eyes. All around.

I didn’t used to be the kind of guy who sat around analyzing his dreams. Besides, after I wake up, if I remember a dream at all, it’s usually only for a few seconds. I’m like a lot of people that way, I guess.

But this one stuck with me. Maybe because all of us have multiple eyes.

Bear with me. Go with the dream.

With our two original eyes, we see shapes and shades and colors and movement. That’s what babies see. And that’s part of what we still see through our first eyes.

As we mature, we grow additional eyes, constantly morphing ones. Those eyes can help us or mess us up. They’re the product of our becoming more and more informed and sometimes more and more misled or confused.

We see a couple holding hands, smiling gently at each other. So, we think it’s good they’re holding hands. Or we watch a news story about people grieving over a family member who got shot. So, we are repelled by guns.

But what if the couple holding hands ends up getting married, then detesting each other and getting divorced? And in that other situation, what if the person who did the shooting was acting in self-defense? Or they were trying to right a wrong?

Conclusion one: Our eyes—our informed eyes—may not always be as smart as we think they are. On the other hand, they tend to get smarter, if we keep the damned things open.

Some of those eyes are on the backs of our heads so we can see what happened in the past. That’s not necessarily bad, but then we might miss what’s happening right now.

Unfortunately, and it’s just a fact of life, not everybody has seen the same things in the past, or some of us may focus on different parts of the same scene.

Conclusion two: Not all of us see things, or at least not everything, the same way.

Clearly, when I was confined to lying on my back or doing rehab for months on end, my brain had too much free rein. I thought about a lot, including weird dreams and what they might mean.

Worse, having all that downtime fed my growing tendency to be too much in my head.