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Author and federal DEA agent – and former El Paso resident – J. Todd Scott will be the guest of Thomas Branigan Memorial Library at 12:30 p.m. Thursday, March 11, via Zoom.
Scott will discuss his novels, including “Lost River,” published in June 2020. His debut novel, “The Far Empty,” was published in 2016, followed by “High White Sun” in 2018 and “This Side of Night” in 2019.
Scott was born in rural Kentucky and attended college and law school in Virginia, where he set aside an early ambition to write to pursue a career as a federal agent,” according to https://jtoddscott.com. His assignments took him all over the the world, “but a badge and gun never replaced his passion for books and writing,” the website said.
“I was living out West when I wrote the majority of the Big Bend Trilogy . In fact, I was living in El Paso, and spent a lot of time in Las Cruces,” Scott said. “More recently, I've been relocated to my hometown of Louisville, Kentucky (a few hours from where ‘Lost River,’ is set.”
Scott is special agent in charge of the Louisville Division of DEA, which includes Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia. He has been with the DEA 26 years.
“I think what people need to know about my novels is, although they're not about my career, they are definitely informed by my work as a federal agent,” Scott said. “I'd like to think there's a lot of truth to the fiction I write.”
Scott calls “Lost River” a “blistering crime novel of the opioid epidemic and its cops, villains and victims.”
The book is set in Angel, Kentucky, “just another one of America’s forgotten places, where opportunities vanished long ago, and the opioid crisis has reached a fever pitch,” Scott’s website said. “When this small town is rocked by the vicious killing of an entire infamous local crime family, the bloody aftermath brings together three people already struggling with Angel’s drug epidemic: a young medic-in-training with secrets, a DEA special agent and a former police chief who’s had to watch his own young wife succumb to addiction.”
Send an email to sagelibrary@las-cruces.org for the Zoom invitation.
For more information, contact the reference desk at Branigan Library at 575-528-4005.
